Tesla CEO Elon Musk said at the company's annual shareholder meeting on August 4 that an announcement regarding the next Gigafactory could be made later this year.
During a speech at the Gigafactory Texas meeting dubbed Cyber Roundup, the executive talked in detail about Tesla's vehicle assembly plants. He noted that Tesla opened two new factories this year—Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg and Gigafactory Texas—that are both building the Model Y, with the latter being the only Tesla facility that makes Model Ys powered by 4680 battery cells laid out in structural packs.
The topic of future Tesla production facilities inevitable came out, as Musk has said for years that Tesla would build more Gigafactories. However, he never went into much detail about their locations, although there have been rumors about Tesla planning a second manufacturing in China or new ones in northeastern US, India, and more recently Indonesia.
During the Cyber Roundup, Musk said that Tesla "might be able to announce another factory location later this year." When the audience asked for hints about the location, Musk asked them where Tesla should build it. After the crowd of investors shouted out suggestions, Musk said the most heard suggestion was Canada.
"We got a lot of Canada. I'm half Canadian, so maybe I should?"
Gallery: Tesla Giga Texas (Tesla Gigafactory 5)
This is the second time Musk hinted that Tesla's future Gigafactory could be in Canada. Earlier this year, Electrek obtained a recording of a companywide meeting from June when Musk said Tesla is looking at sites in North America. During the Q&A session of that meeting, an employee asked Musk where the next factory in the US would be located. He replied that Tesla hadn't decided yet, but he did say that it might not be in the United States.
"We are looking at sites, but we are considering some sites options more broadly in North America, so including Canada and Mexico, and the US as well."
Whether or not Tesla's next Gigafactory will be in Canada, Musk told investors that it will be one of about 10-12 vehicle assembly plants the company is planning; it will also have enormous annual capacity.
"Ultimately, we'll end up building probably at least 10 or 12 Gigafactories and they will be really big Gigafactories aiming for an average output of 1.5 to 2 million units per factory, which is enormous."
For reference, Tesla's highest-performing Gigafactories so far—Giga Shanghai and Fremont Factory—last year churned out about 500,000 vehicles each. You can check out Musk's comments on the new Gigafactory and a lot more topics in the video recording of Tesla's annual meeting of stockholders placed at the top of this page.
