After a three-week shutdown at Tesla's Giga Shanghai in China, production is ramping back up in a big way. This comes as no surprise thanks to the factory's successful ramps in the past, and Tesla's need to make up for a notable chunk of lost production.
Keep in mind that the factory pause not only impacted local Tesla deliveries in China, but also deliveries across the globe since the China factory is Tesla's primary export hub.
As noted by our friends at Teslarati, CEO Elon Musk said on the recent Q1 2022 Tesla investors conference call that production at Giga Shanghai is “coming back with a vengeance.”
Tesla just reopened the factory on Monday, April 18, 2022, though, reportedly, production didn't start immediately. Instead, the company was making preparations to begin a close-loop factory setup, where employees would temporarily eat and sleep at the factory.
The automaker reportedly started with just a single shift, though it's longer and runs for more days than the factory's usual situation. While Giga Shanghai typically runs 24 hours per day with three shifts on a four-days-on-two-days-off schedule, production started this week with single 12-hour shifts running six days on with one day off.
Teslarati shared the following tweet with a short video clip showing what's being reported as the first batch of Model Y crossovers ready for shipping since the factory reopened:
In addition to the above video tweet, people have been sharing images on social media that were reportedly taken this week, though we have no way of knowing exactly when the photos were captured. At any rate, as you can see, they show Giga Shanghai's holding lots with a growing number of vehicles, and some car carriers loaded up as well.
Various local media outlets also reported that the lots were filling up, and even showed car carriers transporting Tesla's vehicles away from the factory, so we can only assume that the images are current.
The report also claims that about 8,000 employees are now officially back to work at the China factory. Moreover, the facility's battery and motor production lines are running at full speed. That said, vehicle production lines are reportedly still in the process of ramping back up.
According to South China Morning Post, Giga Shanghai is currently producing about 1,000 cars per day, which is only about half of the number of vehicles it was building prior to the shutdown.
The publication also reported that North China University of Technology researcher David Zhang estimates Tesla's current component supply is good for about a week of production. He says that two weeks of component supply is the norm, and it may be some time before Tesla and other automakers can get back to full production capacity in Shanghai.
