The United States government, López Obrador said, offers a subsidy to attract this type of investment: for every peso that the company invests, the government has to give one peso and fifty cents.
“A subsidy like that… We couldn’t,” López Obrador said. “He (Elon Musk) understood it perfectly.”
“Mexico’s competitive advantages are unique in the world and we (Elon Musk and the Mexican president) agree that Mexico’s main resource is the quality of its workers. That is not found in other parts of the world,” added the president.
Mexico, which has built an attractive platform for vehicle production, has not yet managed to attract investment for the manufacture of lithium cells, which is still concentrated in Asia.
Vehicle manufacturers that already assemble electric models in North America, such as Ford and General Motors, carry out the final assembly of the battery casing in the region, but with cells still imported from Asian countries.
The US government has sought to attract investment related to the production of semiconductors and lithium cells to reduce its dependence on China, Taiwan and Korea.
A Tesla spokesman said last week that it would focus cell production in the United States in light of the tax incentives of the Inflation Reduction Law (IRA).
European Union leaders have expressed concern that the local content requirements of much of the $369 billion in grants of the IRA encourage companies to leave Europe for the United States.
Tesla is preparing to produce cell components such as electrodes, some of which will be shipped from its Gruenheide plant in Brandenburg state to the United States, the spokesman said.
The European Commission has proposed relaxing the rules on state aid for investments in renewable energy, decarbonisation of industry, hydrogen or zero-emission vehicles, although the German economy minister warned that Europe should not respond to US law with excessive subsidies.
With information from Tzuara De Luna and Reuters
