Following comments last week from Elon Musk where he said that the Gigafactory 1 could be one of the production bottlenecks of the Tesla Model 3 production ramp, Panasonic’s CEO has confirmed the situation. For a bit of context, Panasonic is currently Tesla’s battery cell manufacturing partner at the factory.
Before today, it wasn’t known which component from the Gigafactory was causing hold-ups with Model 3 production, but we now know that it was battery production. Panasonic CEO, Kazuhiro Tsuga said that the causes of production bottlenecks were now understood, meaning that output could be increased soon.
The battery cells for the Model 3 began production back in June, It’s safe to say that Tesla wasn’t expecting the Gigafactory to be one of the restraining factors of Model 3 production. According to website Electrek, in order for Tesla to produce 5,000 Model 3 vehicles per week by the end of the year, Panasonic must achieve an annual production rate of over 15GWh of battery cells. If achieved, the Gigafactory would have the biggest output of any battery factory in the world.
Tesla is due to release its third quarter financial report soon, which may shed some light on the production issues the company is facing.