By the way, I attended the opening event for the Tyson's, VA Store/Service Center last Friday and thought I would share some of the interesting tidbits that I gathered from hearing and talking with the various employees there, that night.
Most importantly Jim Chen was there along with a bunch of local government officials and I was able to be a fly on the wall while he was talking with them (before the actual speech and such which there is a video for over here:
Tesla SC confirmed Tyco road, Tyson's corner - Page 14)
Anyway, here are things mentioned, some new and some old, and some re-confirmations.
- Tesla is now over 11k employees globally, most of those being in the US.
- The Gigafactory should produce its first cells in the "early part of next year" (I quote that, because that was how it was phrased... speculate away there!)
- The Gigafactory when it comes online will raise the US sourced parts of the car to a whopping 98%! Making it the highest percentage American made car. (this is up from the current 50-something%)
- Tyson's Corner, VA Gallery remains the number 1 in the US as far as foot traffic into the store... which is sad considering the law still won't allow them to "sell" anything out of that store (not really helpful, just one of those random facts that I love to hear about).
From one of the other employees he said that they have continued to see across the country (US) a steady rise in orders, although as is usual the first part of the year experienced the seasonal drop, but orders remain strong.
That was about all that I got from the event news worthy... sorry to not post about it sooner. Not sure how it might impact the stock price of today, but the Gigafactory stuff I thought was useful as it gives us a new data point on timing and I was rather impressed at the US sourced number he threw out there which grows on top of what Elon was saying at Detroit.
