Source: Tencent Automobile

Earlier this summer, Tesla announced an agreement with the Shanghai government to set up a wholly owned local factory.

Later, Tesla accelerated the Gigafactory 3 program to deal with the trade war between the United States and China.

In October, Tesla announced that it had acquired 210 acres of land for Gigafactory 3 in China and said that construction plans were accelerating.

The timetable for Gigafactory 3 to start production is unclear, but Tesla CEO Musk said Tesla plans to bring "partial production of Model 3" to China next year.

Earlier this month, the Shanghai Municipal Government said, "The Tesla factory has basically completed land leveling work and is about to start construction. The project is expected to be put into operation in the second half of next year.

Aerial photographs from Tesla's Factory show that Tesla has made some progress on a large area of land and started construction:

The company seems to have built a large fence around Gigafactory 3, which is large enough to accommodate a building the size of Gigfactory 1.

Tesla also has some heavy machinery on site and is receiving some building materials.

Although Tesla's goal is to prepare Shanghai factories for the partial production of Model 3 next year, the actual vehicle production is not expected to be realized in the next few years.

When Tesla first announced the plant, he said: "It expects construction to begin in the near future, and it will take about two years to start production of vehicles, and then two to three years to achieve the target of producing about 500,000 vehicles per year for Chinese customers."