“They (the suppliers) continue to produce regardless of the project here (in Mexico)… Tesla is the brand with the highest sales of electric cars, so the volumes (at the Austin plant) are going up, and the suppliers (who supply it from Mexico) are doing very well, they are happy,” says Manuel Montoya, director of the Nuevo León Automotive Cluster, in an interview with Expansion.
In the middle of this year, several American media reported that Tesla had invested another $770 million in the Austin complex to increase its production capacity, a distinctive feature of the company’s “gigafactories.” Since mid-July, the CyberTruck has also been assembled at the Texas complex, a vehicle that competes in the pickup truck market and which had experienced delays due to interruptions in supply chains.
At the end of 2022, it produced 5,000 vehicles and the goal is to reach half a million units this year.
Musk has reiterated on several occasions his plan to convert the Texas plant into the largest automobile factory in the United States. Simultaneously, Tesla has set the ambitious goal of producing 20 million vehicles per year by 2030.
And the Santa Catarina plant?
In March, Elon Musk confirmed the construction of the plant in Mexican territory. Then, the Mexican authorities estimated a figure of between 4,500 and 5,000 million dollars. However, last week, Samuel García, the state governor, announced that he would meet with company executives and announced that the total investment would be $15 billion, including the supply chain.
“The plant we announced in March, forget it, looks like it will be twice as big. Tesla and its suppliers together will invest $15 billion over two years. We sometimes underestimate the magnitude of these figures, but $15 billion is an enormously significant amount in a very short period,” the official added during a press conference in the state.
If the investment mentioned by the governor comes to fruition, this Tesla plant would represent the largest capital investment in the company’s history. For example, the Austin factory, which was inaugurated in April of last year, required an investment of 1 billion dollars.
The company allocated $2 billion to establish its plant in Shanghai, China, its first outside its home country. While the investment to launch a similar complex in Germany, known as Berlin-Branderburg, amounted to 5,000 million euros.