New photos show Tesla's massive Nevada factory is coming along

'Guess we shouldn't be too surprised that the what's going to be world's largest factory...continues to get larger.

Tesla's Gigafactory, a gleaming white structure amid the muted browns surrounding Reno, Nevada, seems to be coming along, according to photos snapped by NM Group, a company that describes itself as specializing in "surveying and mapping, asset modeling and management, and engineering."

The group was recently mapping the area for potential power lines on behalf of an electricity company, according to Tim Hustwayte, a senior client manager based in the United Kingdom. The route took them close to the Gigafactory, and they got some shots that appear to show the factory having bulked up since Tesla's battery cell began rolling off production lines at the start of the year.

The Gigafactory employed nearly 3,000 people at the start of the year, less than half of how many people are expected to be employed there by the end of 2017. Some of those are temporary positions related to construction, but Bloomberg reports that 6,500 people will work full-time at the factory by 2018.

At the start of the year, it wasn't close to being even 50 percent complete.