Tesla Inc is to build a new battery factory in Shanghai that is to start production in the second quarter of next year, the Xinhua news agency reported.
The company led by Elon Musk, who is visiting China this weekend, made the announcement at a signing ceremony for the project in Shanghai, the report said.
Tesla is to manufacture its Megapack large-scale energy-storage unit in the new facility, which adds to the company’s Gigafactory for electric vehicles in Shanghai and deepens its investment in China.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Construction is scheduled to begin in the third quarter of this year and the plant is to commence in the second quarter of next year.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Megapack is intended as a massive battery to help stabilize energy grids, with the company saying each unit can store enough energy to power an average of 3,600 homes for one hour.
The new factory would initially produce 10,000 Megapacks every year, equal to about 40 gigawatt-hours of energy storage, Xinhua said, adding that the products would be sold worldwide.
Musk’s visit comes at a time of heightened tensions between China and the US over everything from an alleged Chinese spy balloon being shot down over US skies to Beijing’s partnership with Russian President Vladimir Putin amid his country’s war in Ukraine.
Musk is traveling with Tom Zhu (朱曉彤), who was named Tesla’s senior vice president of automotive this month.
Zhu joined in 2014 and led the construction and operations of Tesla’s factory in Shanghai, living in the facility during COVID-19 lockdowns.
He is one of just four named executive officers along with Musk, chief financial officer Zachary Kirkhorn and Drew Baglino, senior vice president of Powertrain and Energy Engineering.
After the US, China is Tesla’s largest market, accounting for 22.3 percent of revenue last year. The company increased shipments from its Shanghai plant last month.
In October last year, the electric vehicle maker — a major player in hyper-competitive China — cut prices on models produced at its enormous factory on the outskirts of Shanghai. Matters escalated in January, with another discount that left Tesla’s locally made vehicles as much as 14 percent cheaper than last year, and in some cases almost 50 percent less expensive than in the US and Europe.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) would not produce its most advanced technologies in the US next year, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. Kuo made the comment during an appearance at the legislature, hours after the chipmaker announced that it would invest an additional US$100 billion to expand its manufacturing operations in the US. Asked by Taiwan People’s Party Legislator-at-large Chang Chi-kai (張啟楷) if TSMC would allow its most advanced technologies, the yet-to-be-released 2-nanometer and 1.6-nanometer processes, to go to the US in the near term, Kuo denied it. TSMC recently opened its first US factory, which produces 4-nanometer
PROTECTION: The investigation, which takes aim at exporters such as Canada, Germany and Brazil, came days after Trump unveiled tariff hikes on steel and aluminum products US President Donald Trump on Saturday ordered a probe into potential tariffs on lumber imports — a move threatening to stoke trade tensions — while also pushing for a domestic supply boost. Trump signed an executive order instructing US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick to begin an investigation “to determine the effects on the national security of imports of timber, lumber and their derivative products.” The study might result in new tariffs being imposed, which would pile on top of existing levies. The investigation takes aim at exporters like Canada, Germany and Brazil, with White House officials earlier accusing these economies of
Teleperformance SE, the largest call-center operator in the world, is rolling out an artificial intelligence (AI) system that softens English-speaking Indian workers’ accents in real time in a move the company claims would make them more understandable. The technology, called accent translation, coupled with background noise cancelation, is being deployed in call centers in India, where workers provide customer support to some of Teleperformance’s international clients. The company provides outsourced customer support and content moderation to global companies including Apple Inc, ByteDance Ltd’s (字節跳動) TikTok and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. “When you have an Indian agent on the line, sometimes it’s hard
PROBE CONTINUES: Those accused falsely represented that the chips would not be transferred to a person other than the authorized end users, court papers said Singapore charged three men with fraud in a case local media have linked to the movement of Nvidia’s advanced chips from the city-state to Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) firm DeepSeek (深度求索). The US is investigating if DeepSeek, the Chinese company whose AI model’s performance rocked the tech world in January, has been using US chips that are not allowed to be shipped to China, Reuters reported earlier. The Singapore case is part of a broader police investigation of 22 individuals and companies suspected of false representation, amid concerns that organized AI chip smuggling to China has been tracked out of nations such
RSS