Tesla officially announced “Gigafactory Mexico” to build a next-generation vehicle platform to support the new models.
We’ve known it was coming for months, and Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador confirmed it yesterday, but now Tesla has made it official.
At Tesla Investor Day today, the automaker announced that the project, now called Gigafactory Mexico, will be built outside of Monterrey in Nuevo León.
Tesla released the plant rendering above, but hasn’t released any details about the plant other than that it will be used to produce vehicles based on the automaker’s new vehicle platform.
The timetable for the new project has not been released either, but we do know that a quick regulatory process and a route to construction and production were part of the negotiation process with the government.
The automaker will attempt to recreate its success with Gigafactory Shanghai and Gigafactory Texas, which Tesla has been able to produce relatively quickly.
One of the reasons for choosing Monterrey is its proximity to Gigafactory Texas and Tesla headquarters, which are about a 7-hour drive from the new factory site.
Tesla also managed to negotiate an interesting deal that will enable efficiency in moving between locations.
As mentioned earlier, people crossing the border between Texas and Nuevo León were surprised to see not only the usual marked lanes for cars and trucks but also one marked “Tesla”.
We ended up finding out that Tesla had made a deal with the state of Nuevo León to have its own lane at the border crossing in order to reduce waiting times for shipments going through the border. Or at least that was the explanation of Ivan Rivas, Nuevo León’s Minister of Economy.
While it’s true that Tesla has several suppliers in the state, as we reported at the time, we suspect the move may have more to do with Tesla’s potential investment in a factory in the state.
Now it has been confirmed with Gigafactory Mexico.
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