Dive Brief:

• Tesla is $62 million into the $5 billion, multi-year construction of the world’s largest lithium-ion battery plant near Reno, NV, according to an analysis of building permit data by the Reno Gazette-Journal.

• To date, the electric car maker has started building the gigafactory’s steel structure, installing a 1.5 million-gallon water tank and pouring concrete for the factory’s main substation.

• The plant reportedly will measure 10 million square feet when it is completed—larger than all of the world’s other lithium-ion plants combined, the newspaper calculated.

Dive Insight:

In its examination of building permits, the Gazette-Journal discovered that the company started prepping the building site on May 19, 2014, before it officially announced it had chosen the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center as the site of its new factory. In fact, the newspaper reported, Nevada was still competing with other states for the plant at the time.