Elon Musk was in Monterrey, Mexico over the weekend and his appearance might indicate interest in a new Tesla factory location. The CEO was accompanied by other high-level Tesla execs as well as the US ambassador to Mexico. Unnamed sources suggest that even if a factory isn’t in the works, Tesla has bigger plans for the country.
The Mexican newspaper Milenio published photos of Musk along with several other officials in the state of Nuevo Leon. On Tesla’s side, director of Business Development, Rohan Patel, along with market manager of Tesla Mexico, Eduardo Grandio, were both present. Ken Salazar, the US ambassador in Mexico, was also present.
Mexican state officials including Governor Samuel Garcia and his wife Mariana Rodriguez were both on hand. Ivan Rivas, Secretary of Economy, along with Francisco Roja who is the Secretary of Labor were in attendance as well. Milenio didn’t name sources but said that those in attendance indicated that Tesla is considering a plant near La Huasteca, in Santa Catarina.
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El fundador de Tesla y de SpaceX, Elon Musk, estuvo de visita en Monterrey, #NL.
Musk se reunió con el Subsecretario de Inversión, Emmanuel Loo; además aparece dialogando con una persona y al fondo se ve a Mariana Rodríguez.
📝: Silvia Olvera / El Norte pic.twitter.com/KwZsGaalb1
— HuGo Aranda Tamayo®️ (@arandatamayo_) October 23, 2022
It’s also possible that Tesla is working to solidify connections with parts suppliers in the region. It already utilizes parts from Mexican plants run by Forvia and ZF. Growing that pipeline and solidifying relationships would make it all the easier to get parts for the Texas-based EV company.
Either eventuality seems possible as Musk has publicly stated that he wants to grow Tesla to “extreme size.” Part of that plan includes building some 20 million EVs per year worldwide by 2030. To put that goal into perspective, GM has previously stated that it wanted to build 5 million EVs by 2030 in total.
Put simply, to achieve anywhere near 20 million electric vehicles per year by 2030, Tesla is going to need a lot more factories than it has right now. Tesla has not responded to our request for comment but we’ll update this story should we hear back from it.