Tesla (TSLA) will break ground on battery factory next month. But where?

Tesla (TSLA) reported first-quarter earnings Wednesday, and Elon Musk said the company could break ground on its factory producing lithium-ion cells as early as next month. Tesla is still evaluating four states, including California, as potential locations.

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, waves during a news conference to mark the company's delivery of the first batch of electric cars to Chinese customers in Beijing last month. During Tesla's first-quarter earnings report, Musk said that Tesla's reception in China had been 'enthusiastic' and said the automaker would break ground on its gigafactory in the US sometime next month.

That's essentially the number it had said it would sell in the quarter, but the total is slightly down from the record 6,892 sold in the prior quarter.
It built 7,535 Model S cars in the quarter, however, building inventories as it began shipping cars to China--where sales started last month--and continuing to roll out sales in various European countries.

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The number of Tesla electric cars produced in the first quarter was roughly 2 percent above the prior guidance of 7,400 cars. During the quarter, net orders in North America grew 10 percent.
Production for the second quarter is expected to increase to a level of 8,500 to 9,000 Model S cars, with projected global deliveries of 7,500.
And Tesla expects to deliver 35,000 cars during all of calendar 2014, CEO Elon Musk said, as it continues to be limited not by demand but by production capacity.
By the end of this year, according to the shareholder letter, the company expects to be building 1,000 electric cars each week in its Fremont factory.
On a conference call for financial analysts and media, Musk noted that the company had made dozens of running changes to the Model S over the last year and half--and promised "some very exciting software updates" in the months to come.
Tesla will also launch the right-hand-drive version of the Model S next month in the United Kingdom--it opened a London store last October--and in both Hong Kong and Japan sometime during the summer.