On Thursday night, Tesla CEO Elon Musk spoke at a grand opening event for the electric vehicle maker’s new $1.1 billion factory near the Austin airport in Texas.
At the event, he spoke about how massive the new factory is, and teased products that are still in development, including the Cybertruck, and a robotaxi that he promised would look quite futuristic.
“It wasn’t easy building this humongous building and getting all this equipment here,” Musk said, sporting a large black cowboy hat and thanking Tesla’s neighbors in Travis County, as well as Tesla employees who helped build the plant.
“If you put the building on its side, it’s taller than the Burj Khalifa,” Musk said, a reference to the world’s tallest skyscraper in Dubai. He joked that according to Tesla’s calculations, 194 billion hamsters could fit in the building.
Tesla aims to make 500,000 units of the Model Y in a single year in Austin, the CEO revealed Thursday night. The company is also hoping to start production of its Cybertruck in Texas next year, Musk confirmed.
However, Tesla’s timelines often shift. Tesla, and other automakers, are grappling with chip shortages and soaring prices for raw materials exacerbated by Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine.
“In trailing twelve months, we’ve delivered over a million cars worldwide,” Musk said. “There’s still a long way to go.”
Tesla vehicles comprise more than 75% of all fully electric cars sold in the US today, according to research by AutoForecast Solutions, with fully electric vehicles comprising about 4% of all new vehicle sales domestically.
Musk also announced plans to expand its experimental driver assistance program to a wider user base.
“We’re aiming to go to wide beta for almost all Full Self-Driving customers in North America this year,” Musk said. The company does not make autonomous cars, but sells a premium driver assistance package it calls Full Self-Driving. Owners who have the premium option can test out new, unfinished features on public roads through Tesla’s FSD Beta program. Currently the program is limited to a selection of Tesla customers and employees.
