Is Tesla looking to bring a European factory online? Maybe, and it might just be in Slovakia. AutoBlog Green reports that the electric automaker is in talks with officials in Slovakia about potentially building a factory there, though so far Tesla isn’t confirming anything.
After the recent retooling of its Fremont factory, Tesla will be able to build about 2,500 vehicles a week, which works out to about 120,000 vehicles annually. That should be enough capacity to get Tesla through 2015, when it plans to sell about 75,000 vehicles, and the NUMMI factory once produced as many as 400,000 vehicles annually, so building a second factory probably isn’t a high priority at the moment.
However these things take time, so it makes perfect sense for Tesla to start looking for factory locations now, and specifically on Slovakia. The Eastern European coountry has persuaded a number of larger automakers like Volkswagen and Kia to open factories within its borders. The average cost of labor in Slovakia is about three times less than the Netherlands, where Tesla completes the final assembly of imported Model S sedans.
While Elon Musk already mentioned the possibility of a second Tesla factory in China, where the Model S has over 4,000 reservations, Tesla has proved to be particularly popular in Norway, and electric vehicles are the fastest-growing market segment in the Old World right now. The Fremont factory should handle demand for Tesla products for another three years at least, but eventually the company will have to expand if the expected demand materializes.
Europe or China, who gets a Tesla factory first?
Source: http://cleantechnica.com/2014/10/16/tesla-factory-works-slovakia/
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