Published on July 10th, 2015 | by Zachary Shahan July 10th, 2015 by Zachary Shahan Originally published on EV Obsession. VIDEO Wow, if you thought he Gigafactory was insane already, try this news on for size: according to a Story County official, Dean Haymore, Tesla is planning 7 “blocks” (with one block being the under-construction Gigafactory). It has bought another 1,200 acres of land right next to the land it already owns and is building the Gigafactory on, more than doubling its acreage there, and is looking to buy another 350 acres. If all 7 “blocks” are used as expected, the Tesla factory footprint there would go from 10 million square feet (original plan) to 24 million square feet. If you haven’t already done the math, that would make it the largest building (in terms of footprint) on Earth. For more details, you can watch Dean Haymore’s presentation above. –> Recommended: How Big Is The Tesla Gigafactory? (Graphics) In case you haven’t followed the Tesla Gigafactory story as obsessively as some of us, a few things that I think are worth highlighting here are that Elon Musk has said we’ll need hundreds of gigafactories for the inevitable EV revolution, this first gigafactory is on track to start early (still ahead of schedule), this first gigafactory was originally supposed to be produce enough batteries for ~500,000 electric cars a year (by 2020), but initial indications of Tesla Powerwall demand have shown that it’s very strong and it is expected to push battery demand well over what the Tesla Gigafactory was planned to produce. So, yeah, it wouldn’t be too surprising if Tesla decided to jack up its Gigafactory construction plans and crush the “largest building” record in the process. Tags: Tesla, Tesla Gigafactory Zachary Shahan Zach is tryin' to help society help itself (and other species). He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its director and chief editor. He's also the president of Important Media and the director/founder of EV Obsession and Solar Love. Zach is recognized globally as an electric vehicle, solar energy, and energy storage expert. He has presented about cleantech at conferences in India, the UAE, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, and Canada. Zach has long-term investments in TSLA, FSLR, SPWR, SEDG, & ABB — after years of covering solar and EVs, he simply has a lot of faith in these particular companies and feels like they are good cleantech companies to invest in. But he offers no professional investment advice and would rather not be responsible for you losing money, so don't jump to conclusions.
Tesla has bought another 1,200 acres right next to the site the company is building its gigafactory on, more than doubling the acreage from a 10 million square feet building to 24 million proving all 7 blocks of the initial land plot are developed. The new property will be used for testing and development as well as production facilities that could eventually produce 500,000 Model 3s per year. Elon Tusk has already spoken to how Tesla will need hundreds of gigafactories to support the EV revolution and due to increased Powerwall demand, figures appear that the battery demand could well exceed what the gigafactory was meant to produce by 2020.