Tesla has officially announced ‘Gigafactory Mexico’ to build its next-gen vehicle platform to support new models.
We knew it was coming for months, and it was confirmed by Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador yesterday, but now Tesla has made it official.
At Tesla’s Investor Day today, the automaker announced that the project, now called Gigafactory Mexico, will be built just outside Monterrey in Nuevo León.
Tesla has released the render of the factory above, but it hasn’t released any detail about the factory other than it will be used to produce vehicles based on the automaker’s new vehicle platform.
The timeline for the new project also hasn’t been released, but we know that a quick regulatory process and road to construction and production have been part of the negotiation process with the government.
The automaker is going to try to recreate its success with Gigafactory Shanghai and Gigafactory Texas, which Tesla has been able to bring to production relatively quickly.
One of the reasons for choosing Monterrey is its closeness to Gigafactory Texas and Tesla’s headquarters, which is about a 7-hour drive away from the new plant site.
Tesla has also managed to negotiate an interesting deal will allow efficiency for travel between the sites.
As we previously reported, people crossing the border between Texas and Nuevo Leon were surprised to see not just the usual marked lanes for cars and trucks but also one marked “Tesla”.
We ended up finding out that Tesla had struck a deal with the state of Nuevo Leon to have its own lane at the border crossing in order to reduce wait times for cargo going through the border. Or at least that was the explanation of Ivan Rivas, the economy minister of Nuevo Leon.
While it’s true that Tesla has several suppliers in the state, as we reported at the time, we suspected that the move might have more to do with Tesla potentially investing in a factory in the state.
Now it has been confirmed with Gigafactory Mexico.