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Comment by onphonenow | Hacker News Reader

If you travel internationally you quickly realize all the excuses for why things take so long are just that. Be curious how long Tesla would take to build a huge full factory in China. In ca the permitting alone is on the order of years.

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They built their factory in China in less than a year [0]. Tesla pushes equally hard everywhere which you can see in Germany where they pulled out every stop they could to build quickly and still took about 2 years [1].

0 - https://www.pmi.org/most-influential-projects-2020/50-most-i...

1 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigafactory_Berlin-Brandenbu...

The Berlin factory was larger then the initial factory in China. Its more like the second extension in China.

Seems like in the US Tesla can get something up and running within a couple years.

  May 2020, a selection process was underway by Tesla
  July 2020, Tesla selected Austin as the site
  July 2020, Construction began
  end of 2021, limited production of Model Y starts
  April 2022, initial deliveries of vehicles built at the factory took place at an opening party called “Cyber Rodeo”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigafactory_Texas

Most states and municipalities are pro business so they will move mountains for jobs but not for housing. This is a big problem because there are a lot of jobs in Silicon Valley but not enough houses (despite the layoffs).

It's not an excuse, and I am looking internationally (i.e. this is a project not in the US). Just explaining why the kind of solution proposed (ask McDonalds or someone similar how they build a small building reasonably quickly) is not going to help work out how to build major infrastructure quicker or cheaper!

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