It has also picked up a HoloLens designer as its second augmented reality related hire from Microsoft.
In the recent annual shareholders meeting of Tesla Motors Corporation, Elon Musk confirmed that the company is putting a lot of efforts into designing the factories of the future.
He explained that by focusing on the physics-first principles, the production capacity can be increased exponentially if the focus is on building the machines that build the machine.
Musk says the Tesla Gigafactory in Nevada is being designed like a giant supercomputer rather than a conventional manufacturing facility.
Tesla is currently building Model S and Model X cars at its Gigafactory at the rate of about 2,200 a week or 110,000 a year. Musk says he expects Tesla to build 500,000 Model 3 cars a year. 110,000 plus 500,000 would exceed that theoretical maximum capacity for the Fremont factory.
Unlike incoming US President Donald Trump, Musk does not pretend to know all the answers. He freely admits the Model S was designed with little thought about how to actually manufacture it.
The Model X was supposed to be built on the Model S chassis, but the car wound up having almost 80% new parts, making it impossible to manufacture the SUV on the same assembly line as the sedan.