Tesla Sets Up R&D Innovation Center and Data Center in Shanghai
Electric vehicle maker Tesla announced on Monday that its Shanghai Research and Development Center and its Shanghai Gigafactory Data Center are both online and operational as it continues to expand its presence in the Chinese market. The news comes as Tesla hit a market cap of $1 trillion for the first time.
The auto research and development center, Tesla’s first outside the U.S., employs engineers for software, electronics, materials and charging, it said in a statement. The data center will be used to store Chinese operations data such as factory production information.
The R&D center has 28 laboratories which focus on the development of Tesla’s software, hardware, process and technology in China. The center also undertakes application adaptation and standard testing for the Chinese market, and participates in global artificial intelligence machine learning-related R&D. Among them, the low-voltage electronics laboratory, firmware laboratory and materials laboratory are the three representative Chinese localization laboratories in the R&D center.
The low-voltage electronic laboratory focuses on various innovations in automobile intelligence. The firmware laboratory focuses on software R&D. The materials laboratory has planned and implemented four R&D directions: metal materials, polymer materials, mechanical testing and volatile organic compounds testing.
“The R&D center will further promote Tesla’s localization process in China and provide a localized talent training paradigm for the industry,” said Tom Zhu, President of Tesla China.
The R&D and innovation center will carry out more original development work on complete vehicles, charging equipment and energy products, and develop into a comprehensive R&D center on the same scale as the center in the U.S., the company said.
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At present, Tesla has built a Super Factory, Super Charging Pile Factory, R&D Innovation Center and Data Center in Shanghai.
According to its previous financial report, the Shanghai Super Factory has become Tesla’s most important export center, and the firm will continue to improve the production capacity of the factory. At present, 86% of vehicle components in the factory have been made locally. Tesla revealed in the conference call for the third quarter financial report that it will continue to promote the localization of vehicle parts in the factory.
