SHANGHAI Reuters -- Tesla Inc plans to invest up to 1.2 billion yuan $187.91 million to expand production capacity at the Shanghai factory, which will allow it to employ 4,000 more people at the site, the state-backed Beijing Daily newspaper reported on Friday.
The information was attributed to the Shanghai government platform for companies' environmental information disclosures.
The investment amount was redacted in the document Tesla published on November 23 on the platform when Reuters accessed the document on Friday.
The expansion will allow Tesla to add 4,000 staff, which will increase the number of people the plant can employ to 19,000. According to the filing, there will not be any change to the models that the factory currently produces, which will also be not specified how much production capacity will be increased.
The Shanghai factory is designed to make up to 500,000 cars a year, and it currently has the capacity to produce Model 3 and Model Y vehicles at a rate of 450,000 total units a year.
The automaker's China sales are up even though regulatory pressure is mounting after consumer disputes over product safety and the firm's handling of data. Last month, Tesla said it had built a research centre and a separate data center in Shanghai to store data locally.
It currently ships China-made Model 3 s to Europe, where it is building a factory in Germany. In October, it sold 54,391 China-made vehicles, including 40,666 for export, China Passenger Car Association data showed.
The Shanghai factory is owned by Tesla and is the first foreign passenger car plant in China exempt from being operated by a joint venture.