Ryan Mac:

Among the more impressive figures is the fact that it will cost about $16 million to lay foundation on the site alone. Work began back on the foundation in October and is slated to be completed by April, though the permit did not say how much foundation would be laid. Tesla, in company documents, projected that the factory would be as large as 10 million square feet, consisting of buildings that are one to two stories.
 
 
 Also of note is a permit filed in December for steel work by Phoenix-based Schuff Steel Company. The first phase of structural steel construction will cost about $15 million, according to a permit that cost about $93,000. That work, which began in December, is expected to be completed by June.
 
 BuildZoom, which often pulls documents for home build sites, put other figures from the permits into perspective. Construction of the gigafactory will require 140,000 cubic yards of dirt to be moved for the foundation plus another 200,000 cubic yards to build a retention basin. BuildZoom estimates that moving that amount of earth would require 200 dump truck loads a day for more than four months straight.
 
 Tesla’s gigafactory is expected to begin production in 2017, but not be fully functional in 2020. Until then, a lot of dirt has to be pushed around.
 
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