Gigafactory Nevada

Tesla broke ground on Gigafactory Nevada in 2014, in partnership with Panasonic, to attack the fundamental constraint on electric vehicles: battery supply and cost. The plant manufactures battery cells, packs and drive units at enormous scale, and was central to making the mass-market Model 3 economically possible.

The "Giga" name reflected the ambition — production measured in gigawatt-hours, a scale of battery manufacturing the world had never seen concentrated in one facility. By bringing cell production in-house and co-locating it with pack assembly, Tesla cut cost and tightened control over its most critical component.

Gigafactory Nevada established the template for Tesla's later plants in Shanghai, Berlin and Texas, and for its energy-storage Megafactories. It embodied a core Musk insight: that to lead in electric vehicles, you have to lead in batteries — and that means building the factories yourself.