“I call on automotive companies that want to come to Hidalgo to invest in electric production lines: we are here with open arms, we can offer a package of facilities. But no longer for gasoline cars,” he said, in November 2021, Omar Fayad, then governor of the entity. The invitation was made during the celebration of the 15 years of the Giant Motors Latin America plant. A complex that 30 years ago was dedicated to the manufacture of Dina trucks, and which was later acquired by the Massri family, which has given it a turn towards electromobility.
On this floor, Giant Motors already assembles six electric vehicles, in addition to two commercials, from the Chinese brand Jac. The last of them, a city car With four doors of 449,000 pesos -there is a version designed for last-mile deliveries that is even cheaper-, it was then presented as the electric model with the lowest price that can be found in the Mexican market.
Fayad’s successor, the morenista Julio Ramón Menchaca, saw in Tesla a chance to achieve the ambitious goal that his predecessors had set for themselves. Hidalgo was widely promoted by President López Obrador, who highlighted the availability of water in the entity and its proximity to the Felipe Ángeles International Airport -one of his emblematic works-, and even the president threatened not to grant water permits to the new plant if it decided to settle in a state “with water problems”.
But after a second conference call with the Mexican president, Musk finally decided to locate Tesla’s new plant in Santa Catarina, a municipality adjacent to Monterrey, the affluent capital of Nuevo León.
What does Nuevo León have that Hidalgo does not
So far, everything seems to indicate that the proximity to the United States and the automotive vocation of Nuevo León – which houses a Kia plant and plants of various Tesla suppliers – played in favor of the entity. In the past, when BMW announced the installation of its plant in San Luis Potosí, the then governor of Hidalgo, José Francisco Olvera, explained that the lack of infrastructure led the German company to settle on the outskirts of the Potosí capital and not in Ciudad Sahagun.
The state government tried to convince the German firm with social peace, with security, with availability of labor and with a geographical location (proximity to Puebla and Mexico City), but the lack of roads, housing and ‘high-level’ amenities ‘ played against Hidalgo.
Olvera then recognized that in the entity there was still “much to do” to equalize the standard of living that exists in areas with greater development, while 30% of the surface of the entity is still rural. “It takes everything from high-end housing to restaurants and golf clubs. In Pachuca there is hardly a 9-hole golf course, quite limited (compared to the three in San Luis Potosí)”, he exemplified.
The gap in the quality of life between Hidalgo and other cities still exists. The entity is the tenth with the highest percentage of population with a labor income lower than the monetary value of the food basket, according to data from Coneval. In contrast, Nuevo León is almost at the bottom of the working poverty table, in position 29, out of 32 entities.
A Tesla battery plant in Hidalgo?
Despite the fact that Nuevo León kept the vehicle plant, the Mexican president left the door open for Musk to install a battery plant in Hidalgo and thus be able to cascade part of the benefit that Tesla will generate with its investment in Nuevo León to the south of the country. .
“We also talked about other options… for Hidalgo for a possible battery plant, because the (vehicle plant in) Nuevo León is closely linked to a battery plant that (Tesla) has in Austin, Texas,” he said. the president in his morning conference.
But, although Hidalgo has “geological evidence of the presence of lithium” in three locations, it has no infrastructure for its extraction or exploitation. In addition, its proximity to the AIFA is irrelevant for this type of operations, while the transport of lithium batteries by air is not recommended, since they can self-ignite and burn with heat of approximately 600 degrees Celsius.
In any case, the Mexican president invited Musk to come to Mexico and analyze other investment opportunities.