Eastern promises: Elon Musk lays the foundation for 7 billion dollars Tesla plant in China

Till now, foreign automakers in China were required to forge joint ventures with domestic firms for establishing manufacturing plants, which means sharing profits and technology with local partners. The plant, which is Tesla’s first outside the US, is located at Lingang, a high-end manufacturing park in the southeast harbour of Shanghai.  It has an annual production capacity of 500,000 electric cars.

Tesla signed an agreement with the Shanghai municipal government in July 2018 to build the factory. In October, the company got the approval to use an 864,885 sq mt tract of land in Lingang for its Shanghai plant. Musk and Shanghai government officials attended the ground-breaking ceremony. “This will be the most advanced Tesla gigafactory...With resources here, we are able to build this factory in record time, and we are hoping to have initial production of Tesla Model 3 toward the end of the year and volume production next year,” 47-year-old Musk said.

The Tesla factory, which will be built with an investment of over 50 billion yuan ($7 billion), is the largest foreign-invested manufacturing project in Shanghai’s history, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

Aiming at reinforcing its presence in the world’s largest market for electric cars, Tesla brought its Model S, Model X and Model 3 to the China International Import Expo held in November 2018 at Shanghai.