Tesla is about to announce a new factory in Nevada, says governor

According to Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo, Tesla is going to announce today a new factory to build the Tesla Semi in Nevada.

If true, the move would go against previously announced plans.

The governor made the comment during his inaugural State of the State speech:

I am looking forward to joining Elon Musk and the team at Tesla tomorrow when they unveil plans to build a brand-new $3.5 billion-dollar advanced manufacturing facility in northern Nevada for the company’s all-electric semi-trucks.

He didn’t elaborate beyond that, but the comment is fairly straightforward: The governor seems to confirm that Tesla plans to announce a new $3.5 billion factory to produce the Tesla Semi.

The announcement would come as soon as today – a day before Tesla’s earnings announcement.

Electrek exclusively reported that Tesla was building a production line for the Tesla Semi in a new building near Gigafactory Nevada. At the time, we were told that the production equipment installed would be for about five electric trucks per week.

When launching the production version of the Tesla Semi, the company confirmed that it is where they are being built. For volume production, Tesla has previously signaled plans to build the electric semi-truck in higher volume at Gigafactory Texas.

A new large $3.5 billion factory in Northern Nevada would be a change of plan.

Also, Tesla already has a large factory in Northern Nevada, and it is not even complete yet. It would be strange to invest in another large facility – unless the governor meant that Tesla is going to invest $3.5 billion in the production of Tesla Semi at the existing Gigafactory Nevada plant.

Coincidently, we reported just a few months ago that Tesla finally started to plan the expansion of the Gigafactory Nevada building after years of inactivity on that front. The new expansion could potentially be to support that new production of the Tesla Semi.

We should know in the next few hours. We will keep you updated when we have more information.