Tesla’s Mexico plant to require $5bn investment

The electric vehicles plant that Tesla will establish in Mexico will require around $5bn in investment, an official at the government of the Latin American nation said, providing a first official estimate on the cost of the project.

“We brought to Mexico an investment of around $5bn for the installation of the largest electric vehicle plant in the world,” Deputy Foreign Minister Martha Delgado said in a video posted on Twitter late Tuesday. The investment “comes after 14 months of work,” she said, adding that “it’s not the only one we have with Tesla.”

Voy rumbo a Austin,Texas, a atestiguar el anuncio que dará @elonmusk CEO de @Tesla sobre las inversiones que realizará en 2023, una de las cuales es la que logramos para la instalación en México de la planta de vehículos eléctricos ¡más grande del mundo! #MultilateralesResuelve. pic.twitter.com/uASBBlPUxX

— Martha Delgado +?? (@marthadelgado) February 28, 2023

Delgado was travelling to Austin, Texas, to attend the brand’s investor day on Wednesday, where the company is expected to provide details on the project.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador earlier on Tuesday said Tesla will build the plant in Monterrey, in the Nuevo Leon state bordering Texas, ending weeks of speculation about its location but without offering further details.

AMLO, as the president is known, had expressed his preference for the plant to be built in the south of the country to avoid water scarcity problems that hit some of Mexico’s northern states. The president said he wrung environmental commitments from Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk on a phone call Monday, including using recycled water throughout the manufacturing process.

Tesla’s new headquarters

Recently, the automaker announced its “global engineering headquarters” in Palo Alto, California, a sign of renewed cooperation between the electric-vehicle maker and the EV-friendly state it once called home.

Read: Tesla to build engineering headquarters in California

The company is occupying the former headquarters of Hewlett Packard, Musk in a roughly five-minute live-streamed event with California Governor Gavin Newsom. They offered few other details about the move, and didn’t specify if it would create any new jobs.

The company expects 1,400 employees to work at the Hanover Street location, according to the City of Palo Alto. It said on Twitter that it was hiring for engineering roles, and hundreds of open jobs in Palo Alto are listed on the company’s website.

While the automaker has maintained a large footprint in California, with more than 47,000 employees still there, Musk has criticised the state for high taxes and liberal politics.