The growth of energy storage business is expected to surpass that of automobiles, and Tesla’s Shanghai energy storage super factory is speeding up again
The official WeChat account of the Lingang New Area Management Committee recently announced that the Tesla Shanghai Energy Storage Super Factory construction project has completed the issuance of a construction license.
The project is close to the Tesla Shanghai Gigafactory and covers a total area of about 200,000 square meters. Since the investment intention was confirmed in December last year, it has begun to use the newly launched project service package in the engineering construction field of the Lingang New Area.
Min Zhiguang, deputy director of the Lingang New Area Approval and Review Center and head of the Project Construction Service Office, introduced in an interview with the media that the "whole process policy service package for project construction" refers to the company's service package based on the project perspective and specific scenarios. A full set of service systems are pre-embedded before the approval is initiated, all enterprise-side and government-side matters are stuffed into one package, and a node flow chart is developed starting from the project. This can help enterprises quickly obtain relatively accurate and comprehensive government service requirements and management requirements from the earliest stage when their investment intentions are not completely clear, and achieve a seamless connection throughout the entire process.
This project is Tesla's first energy storage super factory project outside the United States. The intention to deploy it can be traced back to April 2023, when Tesla signed a contract with the Lingang New Area for the Tesla energy storage super factory project. In December 2023, Tesla and the Lingang New Area Management Committee held a land signing ceremony and announced the opening of the Tesla energy storage super factory project.
According to Tesla’s previously disclosed plans, Tesla’s Shanghai Energy Storage Gigafactory will achieve mass production in the first quarter of 2025. The energy storage super factory initially plans to produce 10,000 megapack units of ultra-large commercial energy storage batteries per year, with an energy storage scale of nearly 40 gigawatt hours. Such batteries could help grid operators, utility companies and others store and distribute renewable energy more efficiently. More than 200 ultra-large commercial energy storage batteries can form an energy storage power plant and store 1 million kilowatt hours of electricity.
Tesla’s energy storage business segment has grown rapidly in recent years. On April 24, Tesla released its financial report for the first quarter of 2024, which showed that the revenue of Tesla’s energy power generation and storage business reached 1.635 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7%, and its gross profit increased by 140% year-on-year, setting a record high. In a conference call at the beginning of the year, Musk said that the growth of the energy storage battery business is expected to exceed that of the automobile business this year.
The outside world has high hopes for Tesla's energy storage in China, which is largely related to its investment in the electric vehicle super factory in Shanghai. Since Tesla's Shanghai Gigafactory was officially put into production in 2019, the localization rate has gradually increased. It has now achieved 95% localization rate of parts and components, becoming Tesla's main global export center. In 2023, the cumulative delivery volume will reach 947,000 vehicles. More than 50% of Tesla's total global deliveries.