Tesla to official open the doors of its Gigafactory on July 29

The electric carmaker is getting ready to publicly inaugurate its massive battery plant outside of Reno, Nevada, a plant that is crucial for Tesla to hit its bold sales targets.

Tesla has sent an invitation to its customers to the official opening ceremony of the company’s new Gigafactory in Nevada, an event scheduled to take place on July 29. The announcement was made via email to owners who won a ticket to the grand event by taking part in the automaker’s Referral Program.

Tesla has put in around 5 billion dollars in the battery plant located outside of Reno, a massive investment that is necessary for helping Elon Musk hit the overambitious new plan to produce 500,000 cars by 2018, almost ten times more than it built last year and two years ahead of the initial time-frame. The new target-bar has been raised on the back of the huge interest showed by customers over the upcoming affordable 35,000-dollar electric Model 3, a model set to enter into production in 2017.

Therefore, the company has to produce at a very fast pace as many batteries as it can to cope with the output rate. Having its own battery factory definitely comes in handy, while also lowering the production costs. Tesla said the Gigafactory would cut such expenses by at least 30 percent, while it has the capacity to make 35 gigawatt-hours of battery cells and 50 gigawatt-hours of battery packs per year.