Mexico will have the first Tesla plant in Latin America

By Redação AutoIndústria | 2/28/23 | Translated by Jorge Meditsch

After establishing production operations in Europe and Asia, the North American company will open a new front in its global expansion process. This Tuesday, 2/28, Mexican president Manuel López Obrador confirmed Monterrey as the city receiving the first Tesla plant in Latin America.

The company, owned by the controversial billionaire Elon Musk, intends to reach 2030 producing nearly 20 million automobiles a year globally. As a comparison, Toyota, the world’s largest car manufacturer, produced slightly more than 10 million automobiles and light commercial vehicles last year.

Tesla currently has four plants in the United States and units in Germany and China. They surpassed one million units last year, one-third of what Tesla produced throughout its history.

In 2022, Musk’s company’s production was around 1.3 million vehicles. To reach 20 million units a year in less than seven years, many more plants should be announced in the short term.

The capacity, products and construction schedule of the future Mexican plant shall be released this Wednesday by Tesla. Nonetheless, according to Obrador, the plant “will be a significant investment’.

In a press conference, Obrador said Tesla took a series of commitments to solve the water scarcity in Monterrey’s region, a great concern for the Mexican government. Among them would be water reuse in vehicle manufacturing.

“There is a first commitment, the use of recycled water in all electric cars production, even in paint”, said the Mexican president, who had conditioned the project of a solution that would not represent major risks to the region’s deficient water supply.