Tesla Buys German Company to Help Automate Production

Tesla has agreed to buy Grohmann Engineering, a German company which specializes in the automation of manufacturing. 

Over the next two years Tesla plans to add at least 1,000 extra engineers and technicians to the company in Germany on top of the 700 existing employees. This is all part of a push to begin production of the Model 3, which is expected to begin late this year.

In 2016 Tesla is expected to produce about 80,000 vehicles while the brand plans to crank out at least 500,000 vehicles by 2018. Tesla CEO Elon Musk calls this the first “significant” acquisition for Tesla. “Because automation is such a vital part of the future of Tesla, the phrase I’ve used before is that it’s about building the machine that’s building the machine,” said Musk.

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Musk also let slip that Tesla is in the early planning stages of another massive vehicle and battery factory that will be in Europe. So far, it is being called the Gigafactory two.

The price of acquisition was not disclosed in the deal, though it isn’t expected to close until early 2017.

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