Tesla opens Shanghai battery “Megafactory” with first Megapacks on their way to Australia

American electric vehicle (EV) and battery storage giant Tesla has officially opened its Shanghai Megafactory in China, where it will produce its Megapack energy storage batteries and serve regional markets, including Australia.

The facility was officially opened on Tuesday after a short ceremony, just over eight months after Tesla first broke ground on construction in late May, 2024.

The first Megapack was then rolled off the production line shortly thereafter. Tesla shared images of the factory and ceremony to its Weibo social media account.

The factory will now begin capacity ramp-up over the remainder of the quarter, before reaching its full annual production capacity of 40GWh, equivalent to 10,000 Megapack units each year.

With operations underway in Shanghai, Tesla is expecting to see a 50 per cent year-on-year increase in energy storage deployments this year.

Josef Tadich, the head of Tesla Energy in Australia, was at the opening and noted it was the company’s second dedicated Megapack manufacturing facility.

“The first Megapacks are coming off the production line now, and being delivered to our Australian customers in the NEM (National Electricity Market) and WEM (the W.A.-based Wholesale Electricity Market) as it rapidly decarbonises,” Tadich wrote on LinkedIn.

“It’s great to see the scale of the energy transition first hand, with this facility delivering around 10,000 Megapacks (40GWh) per year for energy storage projects around the globe. Projects that our customers are building and operating to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.”

Earlier this week, the W.A. government announced that Tesla will create a battery “remanufacturing” facility next to the Collie battery project which will service, repair and renew Tesla’s battery products.

Tesla later announced that the first batteries from the new Shanghai factory are headed to Queensland, and stage two of Neoen’s Western Downs big battery.

Tesla built the country’s first big battery at Hornsdale – dubbed for a long time as the “Tesla Big Battery”, and has retained a strong share of project commitments since then, including the giant 2.24 gigawatt hour Collie battery in Western Australia that will be the biggest in the country – at least for a time.

See also Renew Economy’s Big Battery Storage Map of Australia