Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company opens Megapack battery factory in Shanghai
Republican Congressman Mike Gallagher is “concernedabout Tesla’s warm relationship with China, he told Reuters on Monday, after CEO Elon Musk announced his company was building a new Megapack battery factory in Shanghai.
“Tesla seems entirely dependent on a) federal government largesse via tax breaks and b) access to the Chinese market“, said Gallagher, describing”the kind of deals they made there“as”very concerned.”
The Wisconsin congressman, who chairs the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, admitted he hoped Tesla would provide information about his dealings with Beijing. However, he warned,if we hit roadblocks and get to a point where lawyers get involved in the answers, that’s when you start thinking about subpoenas.”
Responding to a Twitter user’s negative comment about Tesla’s activities in China, Musk stressed on Sunday that his company is “rapid increase in production in Texas, California and Nevada“, insisting that the government subsidies he receives are an industry-wide phenomenon and that if they were removed, “Tesla’s competitive position would improve.”
The electric car giant’s new manufacturing plant will produce ten thousand megapacks a year, for a total of 40 gigawatt hours of energy, according to Chinese media Xinhua, which reported the news on Sunday. The plant is conveniently located near Tesla’s vehicle manufacturing plant in Shanghai, which recently announced an expansion that will see it produce an additional 450,000 cars a year.
By setting up its new Megapack factory in China, Tesla hopes to take advantage of China’s dominant position in the battery supply chain to drive down the prices of its lithium-ion power units, in a bid to expand its business. of batteries and solar energy at the same size. than its electric car business.
Tesla’s Chinese sales accounted for more than a fifth of its revenue last year, while its Shanghai vehicle plant produced more than half of the cars the company sold.
Construction of the Shanghai plant will begin in the third quarter of this year and production is expected to start in the second quarter of 2024.
Gallagher is committed towin the new cold waragainst China and used its committee to try to convince the rest of the United States of the wisdom of excluding the economic superpower from certain strategic industries, describing the relationship between the two nations as “an existential struggle over what life will be like in the 21st century.”
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