Leave it to billionaire entrepreneur and Tesla CEO Elon Musk to find the exotic in something as seemingly mundane as manufacturing. At July’s multiday grand opening of the Gigafactory, a sprawling workshop under construction in the desert outside Reno, Musk described the surrounding landscape as “incredibly romantic,” remarking that wild horses can be seen drinking from construction ponds.
But the structure itself will determine whether Musk will make an indelible mark on global manufacturing. The factory will churn out both battery cells and packs for Tesla’s (TSLA) planned $35,000 electric car under one roof at massive scale using a high density of machines cobbled together to slash production costs. Musk said that the factory’s blueprint will more closely resemble an advanced computer chip’s instead of a traditional battery plant’s.
