Grand Tour Video w/ Illustrations & Project Detailed Views! 12 Oct 2026 Giga Texas Update (09:15 AM)

Kind: captions Language: en Hey everybody, this is Joe. Thank you for watching my Giga Texas construction update video. Hey everybody, welcome back out here to Giga Texas. This Monday is actually a holiday. It's Columbus Day here in the United States. So, there's not a lot going on as far as production and there is a little bit of construction, but uh it is pretty much that holiday. So, instead of just trying to get uh close-in views of the factory, I thought instead I would go ahead and do a grand tour of sorts of the entire site and kind of give you an idea of just the amount of land that they have, the amount of construction that's going on, how much of the uh entire site is actually under construction right now. And also, I thought I would add in a little bit more of a detail by doing 360°ree tour around each individual major construction project that's going on. things like the advanced technology chip fab, the Optimus factory, and the work at the central support facility, and then some other areas on the west side of the factory as well. So, not only you get a chance to see what the entire site looks like, but also some details about what is being constructed here. And I'm doing that because I was just at the XT Takeover event, which was also here this weekend at Giga Texas. A massive event. Really, really great uh uh to be there. highly successful and uh I met a lot of people that kind of didn't really know where the Optimus factory was or what was being built right next to the venue and so forth. I probably should have done this video before the XT Takeover, but I'm going to do it today. So, I hope that you find it helpful. Now, speaking of the XT Takeover, as I mentioned, it was an amazing event. I put together a couple of small video clips to kind of give you an idea of what was going on during that day and that in started actually a couple of days before with a lot of events over at the uh Hyperloop Plaza at Bassrop where the Boring Company and SpaceX and XAI and X is located. got a chance to see a lot with the construction and changes over there and then transitioned to Giga Texas and Tesla offering a lot of factory tours to a many of the people that came out to tour and be here for the X takeover. I thought that was really great for Tesla to open up Giga Texas in that way. And just a special thank you to all the employees that helped support doing all the factory tours. It was by far the most amount of tours in a short period of time that they have done here. And of course, we go over to the east parking lot where the main event was all through the day. A lot of great displays, uh some great speakers, uh some good information, uh car shows, uh demonstrations, uh from sponsors, and so much more. And we also had a lot of the uh big time speakers like Nicki Minaj was here. We had May Musk, Fran Von Hollesammer was here, talked a little bit about design. Eric Early was talking about the cyber cab and we rounded it out with Elon Musk and giving us some of his vision about what's going on with SpaceX, Tesla and everything else. Uh we ended up that day with an epic light show and I would just like to say that I was uh thrilled to be a part of that. A lot of the vi the drone video that you see in the X like shows uh uh video that you're seeing here right now. Uh I actually did. So I'm uh just really uh I don't know. It's kind of surreal to me to think that I've been flying here at the factory for 6 and 1/2 years and to do something that way and show off Giga Texas in a different way was really a lot of fun. So I want to say thank you to Tesla Silicon Valley, Tesla Sanwaqin Valley, all of the uh people that worked on that. the volunteers, the sponsors, and of course Tesla and everybody else that put on an amazing event and also all the attendees that came from all over the world and just had a great time. Uh I looking forward to the next one. If you haven't been to one of these, plan for it for next year. So awesome. And the last thing I just want to mention is things are not slowing down as far as major announcements and events. Couple days from now on Thursday, the Roadster unveil is going to be happening just a little bit north of here up at Waco, specifically at McGregor where SpaceX does their rocket testing. And they're going to be doing that uh Roadster reveal and it's going to be something amazing, I'm sure. So, I'm looking forward to that. Uh along with that, on Thursday, I'm going to be up at Terapab getting another video done. So, you know, it just never stops here and I hope that you enjoy all the content and everything else that's going on. So, without uh further ado, let's get into the drone. Let's fly around, do the grand tour and some of the detail around the site and I hope that you appreciate it. Thank you very much for your support. Let's go flying. If you would like to support my efforts, please consider using these links which will be in the video description. If you are interested in Tesla products, you can help yourself and support me by using my referral code. Don't forget to hit the like and subscribe buttons on my YouTube video as this helps as well. Thank you. My drones are ready and raring to go. Let's go flying over Giga Texas. [music] >> [music] >> Well, right off the bat, we're going to start off here on the south side looking across the highway to the west support facilities. This is a combination of several different uh parts. One of them is the test track where we've seen cyber cab testing materials and workshops. And this is where we've seen superchargers being built. The west warehouse on wheels yard which is part of the production process. the outbound lot for transportation of vehicles offsite and the end of line and the direct delivery center. That's where people can pick up their vehicles and they also do final checks of all of the cars before they head over to the outbound lot for that transportation. So, that is where the Westport facilities are located. You can see where that is in relation to the main factory. This is a really great shot across all of the uh uh north part of the site from the Colorado River all the way up to farm to market 969 which is several miles to the north and we're going to go visit that here later today. But first we'll start here looking at some of the facilities that support Giga Texas and the region. The first is the Sandill Energy Plant. You can see that with the uh smoke kind of coming up off the cooling towers. This is owned by the city of Austin and it's one of several different plants that serve this entire region. So, it's not just for Giga Texas. And we fly further to the kind of the southeast looking to the north and see where Giga Texas's main factory is and all the work that is uh underway for construction directly ahead. Now, this is the South Regional Wastewater Plant. This is another supporting agency for Giga Texas, but it's uh owned by uh the city of Austin. And this has actually had a lot of uh construction and expansion since Giga Texas was first put in. This includes a large HTPE pipe that went underneath the Colorado River and came over to this direction. They've added more of the water treatment tanks. You can tell on the ground those kind of circular tanks with the water in them. And the tower, the water tower has been kind of an iconic and almost a landmark for me for the entire 6 and 1/2 years. If I can find where that is, I know about where I am on the entire site. And this is a great view of where it is in relation to the main factory. We also have the horse riding uh ranch coming into view. This is part of a uh parcel of land that's about 600 acres that was purchased uh kind of separate but is related to a little bit of the Giga Texas's property and that would add uh uh to what Giga Texas has which is over 2,500 acres. Now, as we continue to fly back towards the Colorado River, which you can see here, one of the things I wanted to point out is this tree belt that is running just to the north of the river is that future public ecological river park. We've seen a lot of documentation as far as what the plans are, how they would like to develop this. There would be a walkway and uh some sports fields and other things that'll be open to the public and they'll access that through River Road which is the road that you can see going through the center of the screen. Now, while we are here, I want to show you that this area uh under development is called the east support facilities. You can see where the X takeover event took place over the weekend. There's the large parking garage where the drones launched from the water retention pond which is part of the water management system for this side. the recycling center and workshops, the east warehouse on wheels yard which is supporting to the west warehouse on wheels yard and the advanced technology chip fab which is a joint SpaceX and Tesla facility that is under construction with this view. Also looking back towards the main factory you can get a great idea where this is all located and the Colorado River is below the drone coming into view. You also see some paving work done on Tesla roads extension on the right hand side of the screen. Now, here's some information about the advanced technology chip fab. You can pause the screen to take a little bit more time to look at this information, but it's essentially a research and prototype facility that will support Terraab and that will be building the chips that come out of this facility as they do that design, testing and iteration also smallcale production. Once they are satisfied with the design of that chip, then they will move it over to the Terra Fab about 200 miles to the east of this facility and they're going to try to do about 10 chip designs per year, which is uh about I don't know five to 10 times more than traditional chip manufacturing companies actually are able to do. And what we see here is work on the foundation itself. It's a pretty uh unique kind of foundation that they're putting in. As you can tell that there are footings on sort of the right and left hand sides of the actual foundation and then another set right down the middle almost the spine. Then they have these heavily reinforced C type or C-shaped support uh structures along the perimeter grade beam on both sides and they will all come together to most likely provide some sort of a isolation type foundation for the main structure. At least that's what I'm thinking. Uh this is unlike any kind of other dis uh construction that we have seen here at Giga Texas. You can also tell that there's a lot of steel superructure already beginning on the east side near where all the cranes are grouped together. We also see more concrete getting ready to be poured on the north end. They're doing some excavation work here on the north end as well. The renders showed this as having kind of that diamond shaped uh angled corners very similar to the main factory Giga Texas. So far those have not emerged, but maybe we're starting to see that. But this is what is going on here on the east side of Giga Texas within view of the main factory. This is not the Optimus uh factory. That is somewhere else. We're going to talk about that a little later. Now, as I turn the drone towards this set of buildings, I'll go ahead and give you some more information about what this is. This is the central support campus and is composed of multiple different buildings and structures. Starting at the top is the electrical switchyard which brings in the power for all of the buildings here on the site. Cortex 2 is the uh super intelligence data center for Optimus and some full self-driving. The die shop to make dyes for the casting machines, battery cathode plant that takes the lithium and makes it into the cathode materials. The anthropomorphic test device or crash test dummy facility and the crash test facility here on the right hand side of the screen. and we have the new water reclamation and recovery plant that is under construction right now. So, there's a lot going on here at the central support campus. Starting at the right hand side of the screen is where they do a lot of the crash testing and validation of the vehicles. And I mentioned the battery cathode plant, the long building on the right, takes the lithium hydroxide that's produced at the lithium plant several hours south near Corpus Christi and makes that cathode material. Um, we can also see the die shop, which is an on-site ability to do that die manufacturing, testing, and maintenance, which saves a lot of time and energy for what they need to do with the Giga Presses, and they don't have to send those offsite. Cortex 2, as I mentioned, is responsible for training the Optimus robot and also some of the full self-driving. That facility is about maybe 75% operational and they are adding more of the mega packs along the west side of the building. As you can tell, we also see two other mega pack sites here. The one in the middle right of the screen is for Cortex one on the south end of the building. The other one is to support the factory itself and also to help stabilize part of the grid around the region. It's a good view of the now expanded electrical switchyard which has uh uh well when it was originally built it was half this size and that could greatly increase the amount of power that was available to the site from the beginning. Then they added the second part to double it and that's because of all the data centers that have been added in plus the growing campus with all of the other facilities that uh have been put into place and are in the process of being put into place. This is a good view of all the mega packs along the west side of Cortex 2. This long building on the right hand side of the screen. Of course, we see the water tanks being constructed at the north end of that water reclamation uh plant. Then that is with all those trenches. It's just north of the die shop. Of course, the battery cathode plant. And a good look at the crash testing facilities again on the right hand or left hand side of the screen. and also a great view back towards the main factory for that context of where exactly we are located. So, what I'm going to do now is I'll bring the drone up to a higher altitude, kind of fly up to the northeast, we're looking to the southwest, back to the main factory right now, and we'll get a better view of what's going on in the north part of the site. Uh, real quick, the road on the left hand side of the screen, you can see that new black paving and it kind of, uh, arcing through the trees. That's the river road extension that begins over by the test track at the far southwest side, works its way around the Colorado River all the way through this part of the site to the north part uh coming into view on the right hand side of the screen. And it right now is uh got some new asphalt put in. So it turns to the left and heads back uh towards the center of the screen to the large structure which is the Optimus factory. And also this uh whole area that we're looking at is called the north campus. It's composed of that 10 million per year target for production of the Otus factory. There's that river road extension I mentioned with that new asphalt. also the Lone Tree Field which has been here for quite some time and the staging and temporary steel corrugated pipe factory which is building those pipes for a water management system that will go underground around the Optimus factory to prevent flooding and to direct the water to where they need it. So, we're going to continue to fly on this east side looking back to the west. You can see downtown Austin coming to view on the upper left hand side of the screen. And this is just a great shot of where that Optimus factory is located in this north campus. On the right hand side of the screen is more of Tesla's property. That's with all these trees, that grass field and along either side of this road, which uh kind of moves its way through part of the uh north part of the site. You also see a little bit of a te a track on the right hand side of the screen. That's for a high school or school that is located just to the north of the property for Giga Texas. Now, I'm going to kind of pivot the drone around as we fly towards the north end of the Optimus factory. Great view across stack to where we started with the east support facilities. Also, the central support campus and then here is the north campus as we talked about. And of course the staging yard with that uh uh steel corrugated pipe factory which is a temporary one but you can see all the pipes that have been manufactured so far and those will be installed as time goes on. Now the trees that you see in kind of this middle section through the middle of the uh view is part of the old sand and gravel mining operation that was here. Now this is a good view of the Optimus factory. also a good context of where it is located with the respect to the main factory. I'm going to go ahead and fly around this uh facility so we get a better look at what all is going on here. This site is going to be about uh a facility about 7 million square ft of production which is about 34 of the size of the main Giga Texas factory. So this is quite a substantial factory in and of itself. It's mostly four floors. They are continuing to build the steel to the north, getting close to that north grade beam and that means that once this is done, they'll redirect the cranes to the south end and they will continue to build more. I would say that the facility right now is about 35% assembled maybe getting closer to 40% and the still will be working on this for probably about 6 or so more months uh just than the steel assembly by itself. Now the groundbreaking took place at the end of February, early March of this year and the first steel started going up a couple of months after that. So that gives you kind of a pretty good idea of the speed that they are going at here now that we are in the middle of October. Now the south end is where they have done partial reclamation of the old sand and gravel mining operation. That's where you have those linear valleys and uh some of the dirt has been brought in and it's leveled off quite a bit of it. the trees were all removed but uh still there is a lot of work remaining if they are going to reclaim the rest of this or maybe do some more construction on this part of the site. You also see that they have like a tiered approach to the foundation and then to the left where the silt fence is and then down to the pond. That's all to help with the water management and prevent flooding which could have been an issue in this part of the site but now with all of the work that they've done that's kind of mitigated that. Now you can also see the south grade beam. It's where the darkest of the dirt is and the footings on the left hand side of the screen and also some more of the footings with steel in the middle part of the uh foundation. Now somewhere in there there may be some Gigapresses made for the Optimus robots, but exactly where those are going to be located and where the foundations are, I can't really say for sure, but I'm going continue to watch for that. Now, the east side of the building is a little bit different than the rest of it. You can see those trust beams, uh those uh on the ground, those kind of darker beams. Those suggest that there's going to be more of an open feel to this side of the building. And I don't know for sure, but it may be the front of the building cuz it will be in a different format to the rest of it. You can see that triangular part of the roof that is for water runoff and they're doing different slopes of the roof at that point. I also see more of the roofing material being put in right now. So, as the steel is assembled, they're putting concrete floors in and doing the roof and uh so they will be moving along really quickly as the steel is assembled to follow along to get the building ready for equipment installation. So, as we are kind of repositioning here to the north of that Optimus factory, I'm going to pull almost straight north and show you some more of Giga Pre Giga Texas's overall property and also, I hope, give you an idea of just how much more room that they have here to build if they so choose. On the left hand side of the screen is that Lone Tree Field that we talked about. We can see the uh Optimus Factory and the main factory at the very far distance. We can see the direction of south on the upper left with the arrow. You can see Lynen Avenue here. That road uh in the middle of the screen. And then all the land around this area is still available for Giga Texas to build on, including everything that you see here directly ahead and over towards the highway on the right hand side of the screen. I think this also gives you a really good sense of just how large the site is when you see how small Giga Texas looks like in the distance. And again, all of the the land that you see here is available and is part of Giga Texas's property. Now, I've moved across the highway onto this part of the site. And once again, this is also part of Giga Texas. It is owned by Tesla. And there's this large field uh that you can see at the bottom of the screen. We have some uh power poles that go through this part of the site. So that will be have to something maybe they'll have to deal with at some point in the future. We also see another section that used to be sand and gravel mining here with these linear hills and ponds and some of the trees. Uh this is very similar to what the land looked like where the main factory was constructed. And this is uh also looking back to the main factory. Uh once again a great perspective of exactly where we are located. Now you can see the central support campus onto the left with that long building which is the battery cathode plant. That's on the top left of the screen. On the right of the screen, you see that highway. That's farm to market 973. And it runs mostly uh kind of northeast to southwest and it sort of borders or gives a boundary for the land for Giga Texas. This also gives you a good view with the arrow where south is. Now, as we approach this green field and also the uh concrete factory for Lonear coming to view, this part is not for Giga Texas. So, this is owned by somebody else. And of course, the Lonear asphalt and concrete uh plant that is directly in view is not owned by Tesla either. And I don't know if this is going to eventually move from this location. Maybe the Tesla will purchase it or not, but at least for a long time, it serves a purpose that it provides a lot of the paving and also the concrete for the construction of Giga Texas. As we pass over Tesla Road, we can see this large clearing, some excavation work, and sort of a hash angled pattern. This is most likely for conduit for lighting. There's a lot of speculation that this may actually be where the warehouse on wheels on the east side is moved. Could also be for the west warehouse on wheels, but uh nonetheless, it that seems to be the biggest theory right now. Somewhere in this area, I have heard and seen permits where it talks about welcome center or some other facilities, but right now I don't have anything to corroborate or dispute that. But looking at what is going on with this large field, uh it looks like it's probably going to be something with a lot of lighting and probably for uh parking trailers. Uh but we will see. It's continuing to develop fairly quickly. It is kind of subgrade to the Tesla road and the around the grade around this area. That's because this also used to be sand and gravel mine. It was uh quite rough terrain for a long time. had a lot of ponds in it, a lot of trees and uneven uh ground. You can tell that they've done a lot of work to prepare this rectangular surface uh by bringing a lot of dirt in to uh be able to do the work that they're doing now and have it serve its purpose. But if you were driving on the road and look at it, you would see that this is uh several meters lower than the road surface itself. Now, as we cross over farm to market 973, this section that you can see with the excavation work, the linear kind of hills and trees and also where the rental equipment lot is located at the top center of the screen. This is also part of Giga Texas. It's sort of a projection uh that just comes across the highway in or the road into this one section kind of defined by the tree line that you can see and then the rest of what we are flying over and to the south of this tree line is not part of Giga Texas. But as I turn back towards the main factory once again this will give you a really good perspective of where exactly we are located in relation to the main factory. Also, you can see the ender line of the outbound lot on the upper right hand side of the screen. So, I'm going to get ready to come back over Farm to Market 973. We're going to fly along the houses that are here looking back towards the main factory. And basically, where the trees end and the housing ends uh right next to the roadway that you can see in the middle of the screen, that is where Tesla's property continues. And all of this part is, as we talked about in the beginning of the video, part of the West Support facility. And what we're looking at here is the end of line, outbound lot, and direct delivery center, which are several of those facilities that make up the West Supports facility. You can tell with all of the vehicles that are stockpiled and the transport trucks that that operation continues to underway. At the bottom of the screen where the Tesla logo is is the direct delivery center where you can come and pick up your vehicle directly from the factory. And then we have the sorting lanes at the bottom of the screen where the vehicles arrive and they are processed to go through the end of line for final uh inspections, processing, and anything else that they need to do before it goes over to the outbound lot for shipping offsite or for delivery to customers. on the south side of the end of line in this what used to be a kind of an overflow lot. We can see all of this construction. This is adding in many more superchargers which are going to be needed if they continue to ramp up and we see a lot more vehicles being processed in this site. But I think this is a pretty good view of where this uh is and what its function is. You can also see at the top of the screen way back in the distance is that Optimus factory that north campus. Then on the uh side opposite of the main factory is that east support campus campus that we saw with that advanced technology chip fab. And we also have a good view here of that material staging yard and also some of the workshops including where they build and assemble superchargers. And that uh is some of that is going off site and some of that we're going to see on that south end of the end of line. As I continue to fly towards the far southwest corner of the property, you can see the test track coming into view and also many cyber cabs that are driving around the large oval of the test track doing all kinds of different testing. This one looks like it's doing some stop and go testing. You can see the grouping groupings of the cyber cabs right now. There's also the inner loop that has some straightaways with different road surfaces and that's for our various uh different kinds of testing that they do with cyber cabs and other models for uh Giga Texas. Uh as we continue to fly further to the south, we get back to the Colorado River. All of this tree line that you can see next to the Colorado River and just to the south of River Road uh is something called the Ecological Uplift Project. This is something that was uh done a few years ago. It was several millions of dollars. Tesla kind of uh renovated all this section and brought it back to more or less its natural state. They built up River Road at a higher elevation. So, it's acting almost like a dam to prevent the flooding onto the rest of the site. And this is a pretty good view of how that is all coming together. As I bring the drone down slightly in altitude, a better view of the test track and all of the activity that is going on it right now. As I continue to pivot the drone on the left hand side of the screen, you'll see the uh kind of the dirt that is being uh excavated almost like a roadway. That's actually a new fence that is being placed in. That'll be part of the perimeter fence for Giga Texas. And it's also going to allow eventually the public to be able to use River Road to transit through this area over to that river park uh that will be built by the Colorado River on the other side of the highway that we talked about earlier. So that's uh bringing us to an end of this grand tour of the site and uh many of the projects and the various uh subdivisions of what the site is. And I do hope that you found all of this helpful and maybe put into context where all of the major projects and construction are underway in addition to the main factory and everything that they do there. So, as always, I do appreciate all your support. Thank you very much. [music] And uh I really do hope that you found this helpful. So, take care and have a great rest of the week. >> [music] [music]