[11] The facility is located at the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center (TRIC) and employed around 7,000 people at the end of 2018,[3] with a goal of hiring thousands more with a total of nearly 10,000 statewide.

[15] According to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, one hundred factories like Giga Nevada would be necessary to transition the world to sustainable energy consumption without any increase in production density such as switching to a dry electrode coating process.

[citation needed] In July 2014, it was announced that Panasonic had reached a basic agreement with Tesla to invest in a factory,[19][20][21] estimated to cost $5 billion.

[25] In early 2016 Panasonic president Kazuhiro Tsuga confirmed a planned total investment of about $1.6 billion by the company to equip the factory to full capacity.

[26] However, after the number of Model 3 reservations became known in April 2016,[27] Panasonic moved production plans forward[28][29] and announced a bond sale for $3.86 billion, most of it to be invested in Gigafactory.

[45] San Antonio, Texas was seen as an early leader for offering bigger incentives and for being a state with a sales tax exemption on manufacturing equipment purchases.

Other location reasons were rail access, Nevada allowing direct sales of Tesla vehicles,[40][46] and low air humidity.

[51] The incentives package included $195 million in transferable tax credits depending on Tesla's investment in the state and job creation, similar to the Volkswagen Chattanooga Assembly Plant deal and others.

[56] At the end of 2016, Tesla and Panasonic had 477 employees and 5,591 construction workers, mostly Nevada residents, and invested $1.1b earning $59m in tax credits.

[37][38][59] Some economists said that number was "deeply flawed," for instance, it counted every Tesla employee as if they would otherwise have been unemployed and made no allowance for increased government spending to serve the influx of thousands of local residents.

[70][71][72][73] This improves traffic conditions for the many large logistics centres at TRIC and Gigafactory, bypassing Reno on the way to U.S. Route 50.

[91] Tesla works with a mining company to extract lithium 200 miles (320 km) to the southeast, at Silver Peak in Esmeralda County.

[45][92] Tesla had already started brush clearing[93] and grading[44] during the summer of 2014[94] (prior to official announcement in September; permit date was June 26),[79] with vertical construction reported in January 2015.

[95][failed verification] On March 18, 2016, a group of journalists were allowed to visit the Gigafactory under strict conditions and found that 14% of the final building area had been completed.

[7] After receiving $800M of orders ($179M PowerWall, $625M PowerPack) within 1 week of unveiling, Musk estimated that the Gigafactory 1 is not enough to supply demand.

[105] In May 2017 at a TED Talk, Elon Musk stated his intention to announce three or four new Gigafactory sites to manufacture both batteries and complete cars.

In June 2015, Tesla announced it exercised its option to buy 1,864 acres (754 hectares) of land adjacent to the original 1,000-acre (400 ha) Gigafactory site.

In Tesla's dealings with the state of Nevada expanding the size was always an option should the company choose to do so, said Steve Hill, director of the Governor's Office of Economic Development.

"On the earnings call (in May 2015), Elon said they aren't yet committing to this but that they are considering increasing the size of the gigafactory here by 50 to 100 percent.

Tesla will receive a 10-year full abatement of personal and real property taxes, expected to be worth $246 million.

The company will pay a reduced sales tax of 5.35% for 20 years, a savings of $66.6 million, largely on equipment purchase costs.

[112] In 2017, 3,249 employees were registered,[113][114] and by December 2018, 7,000 people worked at Giga Nevada,[110][115] increasing to 7,557 by June 2019, mostly Nevadans.

[124] According to the electric car website Teslarati, the two statistics together imply that Tesla makes most of its drive units at Gigafactory Nevada.

[134] The cell components are then encased in Nickel-plated steel cans made by Heitkamp & Thumann inside GF1,[135][110] using 10,000 tons per year.

[110] An April 2019 report quoting former and current employees at Panasonic's side of the Gigafactory described how half a million of battery cells per day were scrapped because of production defects related to carelessness, lack of respect for operating procedures, and the overall pressure to increase output.

[137][138][139] At the end of 2019, Panasonic had 3000 US workers and 200 Japanese technicians at Gigafactory 1,[138][better source needed] and quality had improved to increase production to a rate of 30 GWh/year on the same equipment.

Elon Musk announced at the 2021 Shareholder Meeting that Tesla will aim to increase the production capacity at both Giga Nevada and Fremont Factory by 50% in the next couple of years.

[152] Separately, Hansen additionally claimed that Tesla installed “specialized router equipment within its Nevada Gigafactory designed to capture employee cell phone communications.”[152] Following the complaint, Hansen went on to allege that Tesla fired him as an employee and then as a contractor because of his investigations.

[156] In 2019, staff at Gigafactory Nevada refused entry to U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration who had obtained a search warrant for an inspection.