TWENTY MILES EAST of Sparks, Nevada, a factory is rising from the red dirt of the high desert. It doesn’t look like much—a few completed structures amid exposed steel girders—but this building, dubbed the Gigafactory, is the key to Elon Musk’s sweeping plan to remake transportation.
The Gigafactory is where Tesla Motors will build the batteries that power its electric vehicles. The company has long imported batteries from Asia, but if it is to meet its CEO’s goal of producing 500,000 cars a year, it must build those batteries here.
