Tesla Fremont Factory appears to be getting a new tent

Tesla’s Fremont Factory appears to be getting a new tent, according to a new permit filing the company submitted to the City.

Submitted and filed yesterday, Tesla is seeking to gain approval to install a new tent that is valued at just $750,000, but it needs building, electrical, and mechanical permits. It also has 13 light figures and 12 commercial circuit breakers.

The filing states:

“INSTALLATION OF PERMANENT TENT AT ROAD – LIGHT TUNNEL STRUCTURE, ELECTRICAL AND CONTROLS”

Tesla has used tents at the Fremont Factory to add production space. More correctly referred to as a Sprung Structure, Tesla started using the tents back in 2018 as the Model 3 ramp started.

Tesla flyover captures Model 3 rolling off Fremont’s giant tent assembly line

By 2021, Tesla had filed to make tents permanent at the factory. General Assembly 4 and 4.5 were used to build the Model 3 and Model Y, with none of the production occurring inside the factory itself. Instead, manufacturing took place in these Sprung Structures.

It also installed a tent last year, but it was only for storage.

Tesla’s Fremont Factory has been space confined for some time, and as noted by Morgan Stanley in a letter to investors last year, the plant was “never designed to produce 450k units (at its peak produced ~300k units before Tesla took it over from Toyota).”

Tesla gave Morgan Stanley a tour of its CA factory, and expansion sounds like a no-brainer

Tesla was still able to work with the limited space it had. However, as production upgrades have taken place this quarter, as hinted by Musk and Co. during the recent earnings call, things are picking back up, and perhaps the tent is another attempt to add space.

There is no information in the filing on how large the tent is in terms of square footage. Tesla also did not detail how the tent will be used in the filing.

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