Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently announced the company plans on going global later this year with the Tesla Solar Roof, as he tweeted out, “looking forward to international expansion later this year.”
Musk did not say which countries they plan to offer the roof in but did say initial production will take place at the Tesla Gigafactory in Buffalo, N.Y.
Tesla began clearing nearly 60,000 square feet of space at the Buffalo factory and moved around a large number of pallets and crates to a warehouse location near Niagara Falls, around ten days after he made the expansion announcement.
Reuters and Bloomberg both reported back in 2018 that unopened crates filled with machinery were just sitting inside the Buffalo facility.
Empire State Development issued a statement regarding the move:
Tesla is ramping up in Buffalo and making room for its growing operations at the Riverbend facility. As a result, Tesla is moving in equipment needed for new production lines and must relocate equipment that is not being utilized at this time. We are encouraged by Tesla’s recent report that they have exceeded their next job commitment with more than 1,500 employees in Buffalo and over 300 more across the state. This exciting progress demonstrates the strength of this project and the resurgent economy in western New York.
It’s not clear why the equipment was moved, but one would think they may be creating more room to increase production on the Tesla Version 3 Solarglass Tiles, which are produced inside the Buffalo factory.
Musk is also hiring and training people in the following states for installation of the roofs: Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Nevada, Oregon, Texas, Utah, and Virginia.
It’s not all good news for the company, Tesla has come under recent fire recently for the company’s new Gigafactory they are looking to build in Germany. As was reported by Reuters, hundreds of demonstrators were protesting the new factory because they said it posed a threat to local wildlife and water supplies.
The picture below shows the deforestation being done to make way for the new factory. Despite the protests, the courts allowed Musk and Tesla to proceed with the land clearing. Musk’s Twitter account posted that the plant would be designed with “sustainability and the environment in mind,” and that the company would plant three trees for every one cleared.
