Tesla Motors announced today that it has flipped the switch on the company’s massive battery factory in the desert near Reno, Nevada. The Gigafactory, in which Panasonic is a major partner, will produce 35 GWh/year of lithium-ion batteries when it is fully built--more than the entire world produced last year. However, the full build-out won't be finished for several more years at which point, the Gigafactory will be the largest building on the planet, according to Tesla. The factory is now producing the company's Powerwall 2 and Powerpack 2 battery products, but the facility will be more fully-dedicated to producing cells for the company's upcoming Model 3, which has over 400,000 reservations and is scheduled to launch late this year. The Gigafactory is critical in achieving the economy of scale the company needs to deliver the car at the targeted $35,000 price tag.
https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/04/teslas-gigafactory-starts-mass-producing-battery-cells/