Thanks for the shoutout to the source of the shot of Pruf-rock emerging. Your endorsement of Airwave Dynamics makes me want to check out his videos that constantly appear on my stream!😄
Thanks Jeff Good on you for the shoutout to Airwave Dynamics and Brad Sloan. 0:17. Northend, road. Once the guardrail is completed this main north-south road section may re-opened to through traffic. It’s barely been used. 0:27. Casting, east. Baghouse slab. Large rectangular setdown in the slab that crosses from the completed slab to the rebar section. BIW/Casting door. Empty casting rack exiting what is the north entrance to BIW, through Casting. 0:39. BIW, loading dock ramp. Bottom right. Temporary HVAC gear. Cutout in the wall panel above the last loading dock. Same location and size as the cutout further south near the next group of loading docks at 0:45. 0:45. BIW, apron. Water storage trailers, pumps, and an excavator at the Sanitary Sewer Lift Station. 0:55. BIW, road. Trailer load of yellow wall sheeting. 1:03. BIW, roof. Platform. Different spools/reels/drums of cable since the last flypast. 1:31. Southend, south. Apron. Breakthrough into the subterranean fire escape passage. ‘Texas Cutting and Sawing’, a job for life. 1:52. Southend, west. Apron. Precast wall panel delivery. 2:06. GA, apron. Bottom right. New opening above the loading dock. Conveyor that was seen outside on the apron has been installed through the opening. 3:58. Tesla Road. Cybertruck parked in the staff parking lot. 5:00. Recycling yard. Bin load of bright purple stuff. I wonder what it is? 9:10. Southend, TBM. The birds have found it also. I wonder what they are foraging for. 11:19. Westside, Tunnel Project. Burnt out trailer. Another trailer was removed by forklift and telehandler a few days ago. A fortnight ago there was a drilling rig parked between the trailers. First indication of the tunnel being constructed was a soil test on what turned out to be the tunnel alignment. Just saying. 13:06. Battery, north. Apron. Orange telehandler driver opens the gate within leaving the cab.
@@The_DuMont_Network 11:19. Been there a long time, over 6 months I'd say. There were some others in what is now the EOL transport yard. This might have been one of them There's some quirky things laying around the place. Damaged car-transporter seen at 11:25 bottom left. Been there for over 2 years. Smashed up left front fender seems to be the only damage.
Thanks to Tesla for putting the lights on, there was a shot of this area the other day, and with a touch of enhancement you could just make out an arc. It had me wondering 'is that the TBM?'. Much better with some lights
OMG, I was dead wrong about the Boring tunnel not going inside bldg! I need to apologize to Jeff, Brad, and Joe for my insistence that it would be almost impossible to remove the machine once steel framing went up and it would have made more sense for tunnel to emerge outside of footprint. I’m sorry guys!
You are a true ‘good loser’. I just had to respond to your message…to admit you were wrong is a testament to your values…we all make incorrect statements because we are human. But to admit to it makes you a winner…
Perhaps it's easier inside as the external areas have a lot of drains, including the complex systems now adjacent to the extension. I do wonder how the piles and foundations cope with this as the tunneling is a big disruptor. Additionally they may have configured the extension's foundations with the tunnelling in mind.
@@Tomm9y TBM is 14'6" diameter. Column spacing is 45'10", footings/pilecaps encroach into that space by around 9' either side, leaving 28' for the TBM to tunnel through. All of the various drains are at a relatively shallow depth, the stormwater drain the deepest, the bottom of the drain only 13' below the perimeter road surface.
Thanks Jeff, I imagined that tunnels would enter into the factory years ago and when mentioned it, others laughed at the idea, now I feel vindicated! TESLA are on the same page! Now to remove those over head powerlines please?
Exactly all utilities need to go underground. This should be done all over the place not just for this factory. In my opinion they should just make the tunnels diameter slightly smaller to lower the cost for utility only tunnels.
The roads of this kind of super factory need to be designed wider, such as 8 lanes, to quickly transport materials and complete the shipping process. I hope that designers and engineers must consider whether the size of the factory matches the road when designing and planning. It is also necessary to build overpasses and underground transportation channels, and to fully use unmanned driving and unmanned transport aircraft systems.
Two buildings... The larger one with the loading docks and dock levelers on the North end if the Battery Cathode factory, supposed to manufacture cathode assembles for cells. The shorter building with the lean-to in the North end is called the DIE shop, believed to be a workshop for the dies used in the stamping and perhaps the casting machines.
This is incredible. I thought it would emerge before the factory so that there was a way to connect the outer loop to the tunnel. They did this to save money and have the cars have a shorter trip to the finishing building, but it seems strange that it pops up outside the gigapress room.
Actually, here Prufrock 3 Emerges. Since it was the first time to appear, it EMERGED, NOT RE-Emerged. Had this been the second time it emerged, then you would be correct.
Does any one know what percentage of daytime running electricity needs the solar on the roof provides? What about the battery farm across the road - is that to buffer the industrial peak time grid charges?
One of the regular engineering commenters calculated that the rooftop solar when finished would only provide a fraction of the electricity required by the Battery manufacturing section of the plant. What is generated by the PV Array would be soaked up instantly within the factory. The battery farm (BESS Battery Energy Storage System) is owned and operated by a Tesla Subsidiary. Primary there for arbitrage purposes (playing the market). Probably mates rates to the factory when required.
I’m curious as to why it took so long to create a relatively short tunnel since the equipment is designed to tunnel 1 mile per week… any one with some knowledge to share on that?
At the risk of being shouted at, this TBM was not, and is not, designed to tunnel 1 mile per week. I say that with confidence as an experienced tunnel engineer and having watched this process daily since December last year. The 1-mile per week is just hype, (It was 7 miles per day a couple of years ago). I have discussed previously (and since TBC came into existence) that there is little to be gained from placing all your focus on tunnelling faster. It is a rapidly self defeating aim. This WPB TBM performed pretty much as one would expect. It could have been setup faster (6 weeks instead of 11) but there were a couple of self evident delays in equipment and approvals that impacted the start. Overall production was OK, a bit slow but not bad. It took 2 weeks longer than I would have expected for this set of equipment, if everything went smoothly. It was a new machine with some innovations in the control systems (Remote operation from the surface). That possibly impacted the overall production rate. Not a great excuse as most TBM's of this size and up are bespoke designs to meet a fixed set of circumstances and constraints on a particular project. New innovations are pretty common in TBM tunnelling, and these get incorporated into a programme for the work which includes contractual completion dates, with penalties attached. So they have to work! TBC are still 20-30 years behind the curve of todays TBM technology in almost all aspects of their work (again, not a popular statement I know, but I do have facts on my side). I congratulate TBC on the completion of this drive. I have no idea if it was on time or on budget (I suspect not, given the time it has taken, and the sequence of works on the extension structure). Any tunnel is a good tunnel in my mind. It's how we then choose to use them that I often have issue with, but that's another discussion. I am looking forward to the dismantling and then the re-fit an setup for the second tunnel.
@@davidsalisbury50 Hi David, if you have time is there any chance can you go to the 'tellspring' comment on this video and explain to him what he believes is pure nonsense. He actually believes that they can tunnel 7 miles per day! Not sure if you will have much success. He is a true believer. Thanks.
@@davidsalisbury50 Thanks so very much for the effort! All we can do is try our best. I wish more people who used their brains for what God intended rather than blindly following some cult like leader.
I wonder if prufrock will now go back down and reemerge at the new parking garage. Or maybe turn around and dig a second tunnel back where it came from?
@@The_DuMont_Network Are you serious? Replace the Key Bridge with single lane tunnels 8.5 foot lanes? The Boring company only has one product... A 12 foot tunnel with a much narrower actual lane. Not very useful for freeway traffic.
@@tellspring Perhaps you can provide a source for the claim that the TBM can bore at 7 miles per day? Because I can assure that is all hype and BS! Someone has given you nonsense. Which is why I'm very interested in where that came from. Thanks.
There's things happening in the production area. There are large stocks of Tesla cars here and there. They Railhead in Taylor, another location in Austin, and Fremont as well. The Dallas Service center has two large lots filled with new Teslas stored cheeck by jowl. It is rumored that the factory is retooling for new models of the Y as well as the yet to be revealed model. Note the employee parking lots are quite full. They are not just sitting around the campfire singing Kumbya.
If Optimus will enter production for internal use late this year, and enter volume production for external sales in 2025, Tesla has to be constructing the buildings and infrastructure for that production now. What are the Giga-Texas South Extension (SE) , new End Of Line (EOL) building, and The Boring Company (TBC) tunnel between them for? Perhaps Optimus production (SE) and Inventory/Programming/Shipping (EOL) and a protected and secure route for Optimi to walk themselves from SE to EOL. Tesla has already moved new vehicle staging from the east side to the west side, they obviously don't need an expensive tunnel to do it. The best part is no part. Why is the new EOL building so large, all on one floor, and with those loading docks at each end? Why is Tesla laying concrete pipe under the trailer parking lot south of the EOL building? They always use galvanized steel corrugated pipes under parking lots and roads. They've only used concrete pipe under buildings. Before they started foundations for the new SE building, they dug up all the corrugated pipes and replaced them with concrete pipes. They have finished the steelwork on the SE, yet there is still a large quantity of structural steel staged north of the EOL building. It appears a building will be built at (or over) the west end of the tunnel. Trailers now seem to be gradually clearing out of the west warehouse-on-wheels. There is an extremely logical explanation if you include Optimus robot production in the equation. Recent videos from Tesla and others (Sandy Munro, Farzad Mesbahi, Randy Kirk, etc.) have indicated Optimus will be used soon, if not already, on the Tesla production line(s) for beta testing purposes. After a very finite testing period, they will enter production, most likely in the main factory building at Giga Texas, it seems likely that's what the South Extension is for. "The part furthest from the glass" is for major water-cooled compute to be installed, according to permits Joe Tegtmeyer located. Hmmm! Compute for FSD training for all current models is already in place and in use and Tesla is "no longer compute constrained." What upcoming product needs this enormous new capacity? Optimi will be filling LOTS of different roles in different settings, so they will need lots of different neural network instances and many different sets of millions of different videos to be trained on. That additional compute capability is further confirmation that the SE is for Optimus production. Since they will weigh less than 130-140 pounds each, they would be subject to theft, plus they shouldn't be out in the weather before sale and delivery. Space in the main factory building is at a premium, especially for something as mundane as finished goods inventory, plus traffic is bad enough without adding shipping thousands of Optimus robots. Solution: build a tunnel from the production building to the new EOL inventory and shipping building. Build the first TBC tunnel with one end inside the Gigafactory at the end of the Optimus production line and the other end in the new Optimus Inventory/Shipping (OI/S) building. Manufacture Optimus robots in the factory. When assembly (with partially charged cells) and initial programming are done, they walk themselves through the Boring Company tunnel over to the OI/S building for final checkout, complete charging, and being inventoried. After they are sold, they are taken out of inventory, OTA updated with a neural net version appropriate for their future use(es), and loaded into semis for shipping, all inside the OI/S building. All unaffected by weather, secure, and safe, 24 hours a day. The big new west parking lot and large number of Superchargers are for further Model Y and Cybertruck production ramping and Model 2 production capacity as well as. Now we know more since the east end of the tunnel came up inside the new south extension building. Since the west end is in the open, south of the new EOL building, other possibilities are another building constructed over the west tunnel entrance after the tunnelling infrastructure is removed, or a secure, covered walkway is built from the west tunnel entrance to the EOL building. Given the amount of structural steel staged to the north, near Tesla Road, a new OI/S building seems most likely. The timing seems about right for Optimus production. If Optimus production grows exponentially and exceeds the tunnel capacity, they could build another parallel tunnel right next to the first one. When the 7-story parking garage goes into use, that will free up a large area of current parking lot land for additional factory buildings. If one or more are for additional Optimus production lines, more tunnels could be constructed from them as well.
Some very good observations. Just about everything done on this site has far outstripped our original observations and predictions. The one thing you can be sure of in the future with Tesla, you can't be sure of anything in the future.
Hollywood couldn't make a better aerial video/view of this MONSTER of a building!!! Great job Jeff Roberts!!!!!
Thanks Jeff. As always, a great video. Many thanks for including the clip of Prufrock-3 emerging!
Thanks for the shoutout to the source of the shot of Pruf-rock emerging. Your endorsement of Airwave Dynamics makes me want to check out his videos that constantly appear on my stream!😄
Thanks Jeff
Good on you for the shoutout to Airwave Dynamics and Brad Sloan.
0:17. Northend, road. Once the guardrail is completed this main north-south road section may re-opened to through traffic.
It’s barely been used.
0:27. Casting, east. Baghouse slab. Large rectangular setdown in the slab that crosses from the completed slab to the rebar section.
BIW/Casting door. Empty casting rack exiting what is the north entrance to BIW, through Casting.
0:39. BIW, loading dock ramp. Bottom right. Temporary HVAC gear. Cutout in the wall panel above the last loading dock. Same location and size as the cutout further south near the next group of loading docks at 0:45.
0:45. BIW, apron. Water storage trailers, pumps, and an excavator at the Sanitary Sewer Lift Station.
0:55. BIW, road. Trailer load of yellow wall sheeting.
1:03. BIW, roof. Platform. Different spools/reels/drums of cable since the last flypast.
1:31. Southend, south. Apron. Breakthrough into the subterranean fire escape passage.
‘Texas Cutting and Sawing’, a job for life.
1:52. Southend, west. Apron. Precast wall panel delivery.
2:06. GA, apron. Bottom right. New opening above the loading dock. Conveyor that was seen outside on the apron has been installed through the opening.
3:58. Tesla Road. Cybertruck parked in the staff parking lot.
5:00. Recycling yard. Bin load of bright purple stuff. I wonder what it is?
9:10. Southend, TBM. The birds have found it also. I wonder what they are foraging for.
11:19. Westside, Tunnel Project. Burnt out trailer. Another trailer was removed by forklift and telehandler a few days ago.
A fortnight ago there was a drilling rig parked between the trailers.
First indication of the tunnel being constructed was a soil test on what turned out to be the tunnel alignment.
Just saying.
13:06. Battery, north. Apron. Orange telehandler driver opens the gate within leaving the cab.
@DessieDoolan - Do we have any idea what that burnt trailer at 11:19 was about? First I had noticed it. Nice catch!
@@The_DuMont_Network 11:19. Been there a long time, over 6 months I'd say. There were some others in what is now the EOL transport yard. This might have been one of them
There's some quirky things laying around the place. Damaged car-transporter seen at 11:25 bottom left. Been there for over 2 years. Smashed up left front fender seems to be the only damage.
Thanks to Tesla for putting the lights on, there was a shot of this area the other day, and with a touch of enhancement you could just make out an arc. It had me wondering 'is that the TBM?'. Much better with some lights
THANKS JEFF,FOR COVERING THIS 🤗💚💚💚
Thanks Jeff!
thanks for the flight & the link to proof rock vid
That tunnel is incredible!
thanks Jeff
Thanks Jeff, appreciate this and other videos as our boy @Joe was busy with Rockets 🚀
Thanks Jeff for covering GT today and sharing the latest news on the tunnel!
Thanks Jeff
Thank you!
Thanks, Jeff. I remember the early days with nothing but earthmoving.
OMG, I was dead wrong about the Boring tunnel not going inside bldg! I need to apologize to Jeff, Brad, and Joe for my insistence that it would be almost impossible to remove the machine once steel framing went up and it would have made more sense for tunnel to emerge outside of footprint.
I’m sorry guys!
I’m surprised too. Once they closed up the south end I thought it would emerge just outside the wall.
You are a true ‘good loser’. I just had to respond to your message…to admit you were wrong is a testament to your values…we all make incorrect statements because we are human. But to admit to it makes you a winner…
@@michaeljohnson1805 Well said.
Perhaps it's easier inside as the external areas have a lot of drains, including the complex systems now adjacent to the extension. I do wonder how the piles and foundations cope with this as the tunneling is a big disruptor. Additionally they may have configured the extension's foundations with the tunnelling in mind.
@@Tomm9y TBM is 14'6" diameter. Column spacing is 45'10", footings/pilecaps encroach into that space by around 9' either side, leaving 28' for the TBM to tunnel through.
All of the various drains are at a relatively shallow depth, the stormwater drain the deepest, the bottom of the drain only 13' below the perimeter road surface.
Thanks
Thanks Jeff, I imagined that tunnels would enter into the factory years ago and when mentioned it, others laughed at the idea, now I feel vindicated! TESLA are on the same page! Now to remove those over head powerlines please?
Where else was it going to go except inside the building? It's Elon F'ing Musk running the show. lol
@@bigtvjunky9119 Thankfully! Tesla Listened ! Why I Bought a Model 3 Highland!!!
Exactly all utilities need to go underground. This should be done all over the place not just for this factory. In my opinion they should just make the tunnels diameter slightly smaller to lower the cost for utility only tunnels.
Yep; right where we thought it would come out.
inside the gigafactory? why?
The roads of this kind of super factory need to be designed wider, such as 8 lanes, to quickly transport materials and complete the shipping process. I hope that designers and engineers must consider whether the size of the factory matches the road when designing and planning.
It is also necessary to build overpasses and underground transportation channels, and to fully use unmanned driving and unmanned transport aircraft systems.
Merci👍👍👍
Great video… again! BTW.. what is the long building with no windows that a little ways away from the main factory?
What timestamp?
Two buildings... The larger one with the loading docks and dock levelers on the North end if the Battery Cathode factory, supposed to manufacture cathode assembles for cells. The shorter building with the lean-to in the North end is called the DIE shop, believed to be a workshop for the dies used in the stamping and perhaps the casting machines.
Would like to see a flight through the tunnel from factory to parking lot. what do yo think, Jeff ?
Ha ha, I’ll do it! Can you get me permission?
@@peterdog15 I'll see what I can do.
TBC should do it themselves! Good for them, global exposure thanks to our diligent done pilots including Airwave Dynamics, and good for us!!
I never clicked so fast!!
Hi Jeff, I wonder how many dock doors there are? Great job. What a place..
162 last time I counted in February.
Thanks
At 4:18 blue-ish, white and black Cybertrucks.
nice
This is incredible. I thought it would emerge before the factory so that there was a way to connect the outer loop to the tunnel. They did this to save money and have the cars have a shorter trip to the finishing building, but it seems strange that it pops up outside the gigapress room.
Gigapresses are at the northeast end of the factory. TBM has emerged at the southwest, immediately south of the GA building.
Actually, here Prufrock 3 Emerges. Since it was the first time to appear, it EMERGED, NOT RE-Emerged. Had this been the second time it emerged, then you would be correct.
re-surfaces
I hope they redo and enlarge the Tesla sign on the roof or just go 100% panels.
Does any one know what percentage of daytime running electricity needs the solar on the roof provides? What about the battery farm across the road - is that to buffer the industrial peak time grid charges?
One of the regular engineering commenters calculated that the rooftop solar when finished would only provide a fraction of the electricity required by the Battery manufacturing section of the plant. What is generated by the PV Array would be soaked up instantly within the factory.
The battery farm (BESS Battery Energy Storage System) is owned and operated by a Tesla Subsidiary. Primary there for arbitrage purposes (playing the market).
Probably mates rates to the factory when required.
Now that the first tunnel is complete I wonder if they'll start a tunnel for the model Y?
I’m curious as to why it took so long to create a relatively short tunnel since the equipment is designed to tunnel 1 mile per week… any one with some knowledge to share on that?
At the risk of being shouted at, this TBM was not, and is not, designed to tunnel 1 mile per week. I say that with confidence as an experienced tunnel engineer and having watched this process daily since December last year. The 1-mile per week is just hype, (It was 7 miles per day a couple of years ago). I have discussed previously (and since TBC came into existence) that there is little to be gained from placing all your focus on tunnelling faster. It is a rapidly self defeating aim.
This WPB TBM performed pretty much as one would expect. It could have been setup faster (6 weeks instead of 11) but there were a couple of self evident delays in equipment and approvals that impacted the start. Overall production was OK, a bit slow but not bad. It took 2 weeks longer than I would have expected for this set of equipment, if everything went smoothly.
It was a new machine with some innovations in the control systems (Remote operation from the surface). That possibly impacted the overall production rate. Not a great excuse as most TBM's of this size and up are bespoke designs to meet a fixed set of circumstances and constraints on a particular project.
New innovations are pretty common in TBM tunnelling, and these get incorporated into a programme for the work which includes contractual completion dates, with penalties attached. So they have to work!
TBC are still 20-30 years behind the curve of todays TBM technology in almost all aspects of their work (again, not a popular statement I know, but I do have facts on my side).
I congratulate TBC on the completion of this drive. I have no idea if it was on time or on budget (I suspect not, given the time it has taken, and the sequence of works on the extension structure). Any tunnel is a good tunnel in my mind. It's how we then choose to use them that I often have issue with, but that's another discussion.
I am looking forward to the dismantling and then the re-fit an setup for the second tunnel.
@@davidsalisbury50 Hi David, if you have time is there any chance can you go to the 'tellspring' comment on this video and explain to him what he believes is pure nonsense. He actually believes that they can tunnel 7 miles per day! Not sure if you will have much success. He is a true believer. Thanks.
@@DavidJohnson-tv2nn I have tried. But there is nothing like a true believer!
@@davidsalisbury50 Thanks so very much for the effort! All we can do is try our best. I wish more people who used their brains for what God intended rather than blindly following some cult like leader.
I see the warehouse on wheels is down around 30+% from full capacity. Shows quite a slowdown.
I wonder if prufrock will now go back down and reemerge at the new parking garage. Or maybe turn around and dig a second tunnel back where it came from?
Neither one of those would be correct.
I wonder too but nobody knows yet.😊
The prufrock can have a digging speed of 7 miles a day!! I wonder what project Giga Texas is working on now
Hope you are not serious.
They should make a poposal to replace the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore. Their Harbor Tunnel to the West works quite well.
@@The_DuMont_Network Are you serious? Replace the Key Bridge with single lane tunnels 8.5 foot lanes? The Boring company only has one product... A 12 foot tunnel with a much narrower actual lane. Not very useful for freeway traffic.
@@DavidJohnson-tv2nn I am. Research it up.
Remember digging is part of the process, not all
@@tellspring Perhaps you can provide a source for the claim that the TBM can bore at 7 miles per day? Because I can assure that is all hype and BS! Someone has given you nonsense. Which is why I'm very interested in where that came from. Thanks.
It tunneled to the moon : )
Only Elon Musk as CEO would you have a tunnel dug straight into the factory.
Barely any model Y's being produced, and its EOQ too, not a good sign.
There's things happening in the production area. There are large stocks of Tesla cars here and there. They Railhead in Taylor, another location in Austin, and Fremont as well. The Dallas Service center has two large lots filled with new Teslas stored cheeck by jowl. It is rumored that the factory is retooling for new models of the Y as well as the yet to be revealed model. Note the employee parking lots are quite full. They are not just sitting around the campfire singing Kumbya.
If Optimus will enter production for internal use late this year, and enter volume production for external sales in 2025, Tesla has to be constructing the buildings and infrastructure for that production now.
What are the Giga-Texas South Extension (SE) , new End Of Line (EOL) building, and The Boring Company (TBC) tunnel between them for? Perhaps Optimus production (SE) and Inventory/Programming/Shipping (EOL) and a protected and secure route for Optimi to walk themselves from SE to EOL. Tesla has already moved new vehicle staging from the east side to the west side, they obviously don't need an expensive tunnel to do it. The best part is no part. Why is the new EOL building so large, all on one floor, and with those loading docks at each end? Why is Tesla laying concrete pipe under the trailer parking lot south of the EOL building? They always use galvanized steel corrugated pipes under parking lots and roads. They've only used concrete pipe under buildings. Before they started foundations for the new SE building, they dug up all the corrugated pipes and replaced them with concrete pipes. They have finished the steelwork on the SE, yet there is still a large quantity of structural steel staged north of the EOL building. It appears a building will be built at (or over) the west end of the tunnel. Trailers now seem to be gradually clearing out of the west warehouse-on-wheels.
There is an extremely logical explanation if you include Optimus robot production in the equation. Recent videos from Tesla and others (Sandy Munro, Farzad Mesbahi, Randy Kirk, etc.) have indicated Optimus will be used soon, if not already, on the Tesla production line(s) for beta testing purposes. After a very finite testing period, they will enter production, most likely in the main factory building at Giga Texas, it seems likely that's what the South Extension is for. "The part furthest from the glass" is for major water-cooled compute to be installed, according to permits Joe Tegtmeyer located. Hmmm! Compute for FSD training for all current models is already in place and in use and Tesla is "no longer compute constrained." What upcoming product needs this enormous new capacity? Optimi will be filling LOTS of different roles in different settings, so they will need lots of different neural network instances and many different sets of millions of different videos to be trained on. That additional compute capability is further confirmation that the SE is for Optimus production. Since they will weigh less than 130-140 pounds each, they would be subject to theft, plus they shouldn't be out in the weather before sale and delivery. Space in the main factory building is at a premium, especially for something as mundane as finished goods inventory, plus traffic is bad enough without adding shipping thousands of Optimus robots. Solution: build a tunnel from the production building to the new EOL inventory and shipping building.
Build the first TBC tunnel with one end inside the Gigafactory at the end of the Optimus production line and the other end in the new Optimus Inventory/Shipping (OI/S) building. Manufacture Optimus robots in the factory. When assembly (with partially charged cells) and initial programming are done, they walk themselves through the Boring Company tunnel over to the OI/S building for final checkout, complete charging, and being inventoried. After they are sold, they are taken out of inventory, OTA updated with a neural net version appropriate for their future use(es), and loaded into semis for shipping, all inside the OI/S building. All unaffected by weather, secure, and safe, 24 hours a day. The big new west parking lot and large number of Superchargers are for further Model Y and Cybertruck production ramping and Model 2 production capacity as well as.
Now we know more since the east end of the tunnel came up inside the new south extension building. Since the west end is in the open, south of the new EOL building, other possibilities are another building constructed over the west tunnel entrance after the tunnelling infrastructure is removed, or a secure, covered walkway is built from the west tunnel entrance to the EOL building. Given the amount of structural steel staged to the north, near Tesla Road, a new OI/S building seems most likely.
The timing seems about right for Optimus production. If Optimus production grows exponentially and exceeds the tunnel capacity, they could build another parallel tunnel right next to the first one. When the 7-story parking garage goes into use, that will free up a large area of current parking lot land for additional factory buildings. If one or more are for additional Optimus production lines, more tunnels could be constructed from them as well.
Some very good observations. Just about everything done on this site has far outstripped our original observations and predictions. The one thing you can be sure of in the future with Tesla, you can't be sure of anything in the future.