TESLA Inc. completed a project to expand production capacity at its Shanghai plant Monday and is testing them until Nov. 30 as it doubles the plant’s annual output to 1 million vehicles.

The upgrade took nine months, according to a statement on a Shanghai government platform for firms’ environmental information disclosures.

The U.S. automaker planned to invest up to 1.2 billion yuan (US$170 million) to expand production capacity at its Shanghai factory that would allow it to employ 4,000 more people at the site, Beijing Daily newspaper reported last November.

The project was originally expected to be finished in April, the newspaper reported then.

Reuters previously reported Tesla had been ramping up its output to reach a target of producing around 22,000 units of Model 3 and Model Y cars per week at the Shanghai plant.

Bloomberg reported Tesla will lift Model Y output in Shanghai to about 14,000 SUVs a week from about 11,000 pre-pandemic, while Model 3 sedan production will rise to 7,700 units from 5,500.

Tesla shipped 484,130 cars from Shanghai in 2021, accounting for about 52% of its global deliveries.

It went to extraordinary lengths to keep the factory running during Shanghai’s COVID lockdown, putting thousands of workers in a so-called closed-loop system, whereby they slept in designated facilities to maintain partial production.

The Shanghai facility was Tesla’s first overseas production base.   (SD-Agencies)