The Fremont Factory is where Tesla builds the Model 3 and the Model Y, and it is the plant the company grew up in. It sits at 45500 Fremont Boulevard on the eastern edge of San Francisco Bay, covers roughly 5.5 million square feet, and employed more than 20,000 people as of 2023.
Its history is older than Tesla’s. General Motors opened the site as Fremont Assembly in 1962 and ran it until 1982. Two years later it reopened as NUMMI, a joint venture between GM and Toyota that became the case study for how Toyota’s production methods transferred to a US plant, and it built cars including the Toyota Corolla, the Chevrolet Nova and the Pontiac Vibe. NUMMI’s output peaked at 428,633 vehicles in 2006. Toyota wound the venture down after GM filed for bankruptcy in 2009, and Tesla took possession of the site in October 2010.
Tesla quotes installed capacity of up to 550,000 Model 3 and Model Y a year plus up to 100,000 Model S and Model X, and the plant produced close to 560,000 vehicles in 2023. The Model S and Model X are no longer part of the mix; their floor space is being converted for the Optimus humanoid robot, whose third-generation design Tesla says is complete.
