Tesla announced that it has achieved a new production rate milestone at Gigafactory Berlin, which now produces 4,000 Model Y vehicles per week.

When ramping up a new vehicle to volume production at a new factory, Tesla generally considers 5,000 units per week to be the goal.

After starting production late in 2021, Tesla originally aimed to achieve that at Gigafactory Berlin by the end of 2022.

But the goal was ambitious amid a continuing global supply chain crisis.

Instead, Tesla announced that it finished the year with a respectable production rate of 3,000 Model Y vehicles per week at Gigafactory Berlin.

Now two months later, Tesla confirmed that the factory has managed to continue the ramp to now 4,000 vehicles per week:

That puts Tesla’s total annual capacity at Gigafactory Berlin at about 200,000 vehicles, and it is getting fairly close to the goal of 5,000 units per week.

Once the automaker achieves that goal, it has several important implications.

Generally, that’s where the gross margin starts to improve, and the factory starts to weigh less negatively on Tesla’s overall gross margin. It also means that Tesla will likely start to look at deploying production capacity for another vehicle program at Gigafactory Berlin.

Originally, Tesla talked about a Model 3 production line, but it’s unclear if that’s still the plan.

The automaker also planned to start battery cell production at the factory, but we recently learned that Tesla slowed down that plan as it focuses on ramping up cell production in the US first.

Eventually, Tesla plans to produce over half a million vehicles per year at Gigafactory Berlin along with battery cells to support that production capacity, and that’s just for the first phase of the factory. Ultimately, Tesla has said that the goal is to produce up to a million vehicles annually at the plant.