Tesla’s milestone Shanghai battery factory

U.S. carmaker Tesla broke ground on a mega factory in Shanghai on Thursday to manufacture its energy-storage batteries, Megapacks. The new plant spans an area of approximately 200,000 square meters, with a total investment of around 1.45 billion yuan, according to the administration of Lingang Special Area of China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone.

The mega factory is the first of its kind built by Tesla outside the United States and the company’s second plant in Shanghai. The Megapack units can store nearly 40 gigawatt hours of energy altogether, which is equivalent to the total annual electricity consumption of about 50,000 households in Shanghai.