Gigafactory Nevada (also known as Giga Nevada or Gigafactory 1) is a lithium-ion battery and electric vehicle component factory in Storey County, Nevada, US. The facility, located east of Reno, is owned and operated by Tesla, Inc., and supplies the battery packs for the company's electric vehicles (except vehicles produced at Giga Shanghai). If fully built out, the building will have the largest footprint in the world. The facility is located at the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center (TRIC) and employed around 7,000 people at the end of 2018, with a goal of hiring thousands more with a total of nearly 10,000 statewide. Future manufacturing programs may also move to Nevada. The factory started limited production of the Tesla Powerwall home energy storage device in the first quarter of 2016 using battery cells produced elsewhere, and began mass production of cells in January 2017. Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval estimated that Nevada could enjoy $100 billion in economic benefit over two decades from the construction and operation of the factory. The grand opening event was held on July 29, 2016. Giga Nevada is aligned on true north, which was done so that the equipment can be mapped by GPS and solar panels on the roof can be accurately aligned.[citation needed] The factory has also been designed to become entirely energy self-reliant. Tesla intends to power the structure through a combination of on-site solar, wind and geo-thermal sources. 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.
