Anjeanette Damon

adamon@rgj.com

Tesla offered a glimpse behind the curtain at its battery gigafactory east of Reno on Friday, giving local media a limited tour of the progress it has made on the massive facility.

Company officials giving the tour of the giant factory going up in the desert of Storey County seemed to have one solid message to impart: Construction of the heavily subsidized project is "on target."

"We are excited to finally share something of substance with the community," a spokesman said of the largely secretive project. Local media on the tour agreed to a host of restrictions on such things as what could be photographed and not naming the employees giving the tour.

Inside the gigafactory was alive with activity. Giant robot arms assembled Tesla Energy Powerwalls and Powerpacks, office professionals tapped busily on keyboards and construction crews worked both inside and outside the sprawling concrete and steel structure.

So far, the building's footprint is 800,000 square feet with 1.9 million square feet of manufacturing space in four stories. It houses conference rooms, an open air office space, manufacturing rooms and a warehouse.

Giant air ducts pump dry air into the building and piping lines the ceiling to transport water, gasses and chemicals needed for the manufacturing process.

No lithium-ion battery cells are being manufactured at the site yet. Instead, they are shipped in from Tesla's Fremont, Calif., plant to be fitted inside Powerwalls and Powerpacks used for home storage, a Tesla spokesman said. Cell production, as well as the battery packs for the cars, are expected to begin this year

"We are just getting started," a Tesla spokesman said. "What you will be seeing is a lot of construction vs operations."

About 14 percent of the total expected factory space is constructed. The full project is expected to be completed in 2020, a Tesla spokesman said. That's an adjustment from the original construction schedule that pegged a completion date in October 2017.

"Originally, we were going to build the whole building all at once, but that didn't make a lot of sense," a spokesman said. "We needed to begin producing faster."

"We are stepping into it in modular fashion so that as we build we can learn from what we've built," he added.

The civil engineer on the gigafactory project also worked on the Levi's Stadium, the new home for the San Francisco 49er's.

To meet the legal requirements of the $1.3 billion tax incentive package awarded to land the project in Nevada, Tesla and its partner Panasonic must invest at least $3.5 billion in the project within 10 years. According to public documents, about $374 million has been invested so far.

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To take part in the tour, local reporters were subjected to a list of restrictions that included:

Not showing the faces or names of any company employees. The handful of employees giving the tour asked to be referred to simply as a "Tesla spokesman."

Only taking photos or video from one spot inside the gigafactory, with free rein to photograph from the roof or the outside of the building. A spokesman said that was to protect the proprietary equipment being used and installed at the facility.

No live video, audio or photos could be disseminated during the tour.

During the bulk of the tour inside factory, Tesla employees transported the news crews' photography equipment.

Tesla is working to design a zero emissions building that won't rely on fossil fuels. No natural gas line runs "anywhere near" the building and its vast rooftop will be covered in solar panels.

A Tesla spokesman noted that while Solar City was co-founded by Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk, it is a separate company and would have to participate in a competitive process to win the contract for outfitting the gigafactory in solar panels.

"There are no fossil fuels piped to this plant," a spokesman said, noting the plant also has a heat recovery system and has hopes to build a wastewater treatment plant on site.

Activity at the plant is slow on Fridays, a spokesman said, adding that the factory is "following our schedule as far as head counts."

"It doesn't make sense to just hire a bunch of people all at once to look good in the press," a spokesman said, adding that the company has had no problems finding an adequate workforce for the plant. "We want to hire the right people at the right time."

He said Tesla is working on relocating some of their suppliers to the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center and has placed an emphasis on local businesses.

Reno Provisions, for instance, runs an employee café at the Gigafactory.

A Tesla spokesman acknowledged the difficulty in keeping up and funding such a quickly growing company, referring to plans for the mass production of the yet-to-be-unveiled Model 3 automobile as well as gigafactory construction.

"One of the big questions is why do you want a gigafactory," a company spokesman said. "The answer is there's not enough capacity in the world to produce what we want to produce… We want to change the world and the way we think about energy consumption."

Standing on the roof of the building surveying the colossal grading that occurred to ready the site for construction, a spokesman remarked:

"Just re-arranging God's work."

Original Story: Reno media got a sneak peek Friday at the Tesla-Panasonic Gigafactory east of Reno.

The facility at Tahoe Reno Industrial Center is still under construction, but workers there are currently making Powerpacks and Powerwalls - battery packs for homes and businesses.

The building currently has an 800,000-square-foot footprint. With several levels, that makes a total of about 1.9 million square feet of operational space.

Tesla's capital investment persuaded Nevada lawmakers in 2014 to approve a record-breaking tax incentive package for the project.