Tesla, Inc. (TSLA) filed for an expansion permit for its Gigafactory in Austin, Texas earlier this week (September 20th). This permit asks the City of Austin to approve a plan to expand the factory area by 500,000 square feet.
Our friends over at Teslarati reported on this permit to which the CEO of Tesla Elon Musk responded, “Ecological paradise plans from south portion of Giga Texas to river look great, however, we must first get the factory financially on its feet,” he revealed the plans.
The plans to create an ecological paradise at Giga Texas were first revealed by Elon Musk when Tesla chose the City of Austin for its next Gigafactory location back in 2020.
During the Q2 2020 Earnings Call, Musk revealed what the Giga Texas ecological paradise would look like, he said:
So we’re actually going to have a boardwalk, where there’ll be a hiking/biking trail. It’s going to basically be an ecological paradise, birds in the trees, butterflies, fish in the stream, and it’ll be open to the public as well. So not closed and only Tesla.
Located so close to the Colorado River with the abundance of water, creating a natural ecosystem in a vast area of land at Giga Texas should not be a big challenge for Tesla.
But Elon Musk says that the ecological paradise will be developed only after this Gifactory generates enough revenue to be financially sustainable on its own feet.
In the follow-up tweets to the above, Musk said that the Giga Texas ecological paradise will be open to the public and the boardwalk with amenities will be stretched to downtown Austin.
Further revealing his plans for this eco-paradise, Musk said that Tesla will be offering rides on small electric boats made by the automaker. These Tesla boats will be designed in a retro-futuristic Victorian design theme.
Tesla has filed for a permit with the City of Austin to expand the Giga Texas manufacturing area.
If the application is approved by the government, Giga Texas’ manufacturing facility will be extended to 280 acres or 12,196,800 sq feet in total floor area. This will be an addition of 12 acres or 500K square feet.
Tesla had submitted a similar permit application back in June to expand the footprint area of Giga Texas by 500K square feet. But the application clearly mentioned that this extension is required to set new general assembly lines (GA 2, and GA3).
The current permit application (2022-143487 SP) is categorized as “Bldg/Prkg,Clring,Cut/Fill,Spoil Disposal” work type under the “Site Plan Administrative” sub-type.
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But the Colorado River is already overdrawn, along with all the groundwater. Will this project hurt or help that situation?
This is a solid question that will be answered as time passes and the project starts to build up. If Tesla is going to use the bank of Colorado River only for recreational purposes, it shouldn’t hurt the water level.
There are two Colorado rivers…
Elon seldom loses, trusting and betting with him is a pretty damn good bet.
The GIGA factory totally needs this improvement. It will go together as one. We got to think about the environment as where electric vechiles are helping in reducing emissions into the air complementing the outside elements; will stimulate your mind.
If Tesla could engineer a system where water was harvested from humidity (or other means) and included potable water generation systems it could create net positive ecological impact (water being our most precious commodity). Excited to see this project develop!