Tesla Model Y has a third row, in production at GF1 in 2020, says leakage
Tesla will bring Model Y, the upcoming small electric SUV, to produce quite quickly, yet it has not officially assigned a factory to it.
Today, excluded documents revealed more about Tesla's plans to build Model Y at Gigafactory 1 by the end of 2020, have another production line in China Gigafactory 3 a few months later and have a third row seat.
It is based on a report from Business Insider claiming that it has obtained internal documents on Model Y production plans given to Tesla employees in October.
In the documents, the company states that it plans to have a pilot Y-line built on Gigafactory 1 by June 1, 2020, and increase its production to about 2000 units per week by September 2020.
By the end of 2020 Tesla plans to achieve a production of 7,000 Model Ys per week at Gigafactory 1[ads1] in Nevada.
According to the same documents, Tesla also plans to produce a model Y production line at Gigafactory 3 in China by October 2020 and increase production to 5,000 units per week in February 2021.
Tesla's own applications in China have already revealed the company's plans to build Model Y together with Model 3 at Gigafactory 3.
As previously reported, Tesla plans to build Model Y on the Model 3 platform and now the documents also show that Tesla plans to limit the number of changes to simplify production.
The biggest change would be a third row seat to fit the backside thanks to the higher frame.
Tesla commented on the report saying that the information from the leaked documents is "outdated":
"Timelines and information shared here are outdated. When we have details to announce, we will surely share them. In the meanwhile, we remain Focused on Model 3, which we are pleased to bring to Europe and China early next year. "
Model Y is expected to be unveiled in March 2019, and Tesla will release production plans around the same time.
Electrek's Take
The fact that Tesla does not deny that it was their plan at a time, and they do not specify which parts are "outdated", let me believe this is most accurate.
Tesla sent the documents to engineers in October, and it was when Elon Musk announced that he approved the Tesla Model Y prototype for production and stated that they were targeted by 2020.
Everything else is also in line with what is expected.
With a 2020 timeline, a new factory is a bit out of the question at this point, and Gigafactory 1 makes the most sense.
As usual, Tesla has an extremely aggressive timeline, and I think we should not take it seriously at this point. [19659002] We are talking about a production start summer 2020 and a ramp up to 7,000 units per week in just a few months.
It sounds like Tesla's original Model 3 production plan for 2017, and we all know what happened.
That does not mean that Tesla will do the same mistakes, but it's still an extremely ambitious goal.
The third row would be the biggest surprise here. Model Y is expected to be higher and larger than Model 3 and has a hatchback, but a third row had not been mentioned as potentially a part of the plans so far.
It would certainly increase the appeal of big families looking to go electrically.
What do you think? Please let us know in the comments section below.
