During the 2023 Investor Day, Tesla's CEOE Elon Musk officially announced that the company will build its next electric vehicle factory in Mexico.
The company's sixth gigafactory plant will be located near the city of Monterrey and is envisioned to produce next-generation all-electric vehicles.
The Tesla Giga Mexico is expected to be "the biggest electric vehicle plant in the world," according to Mexico (via Reuters). The total investment is estimated to exceed $5 billion and includes Tesla's latest technological advancements to produce affordable, high-volume electric cars for the masses.
At the same time, Elon Musk noted that the new plant in Mexico is an additional manufacturing site - supplemental to existing factories, which, by the way, will continue to expand production too.
Let's recall that Tesla currently operates several factories: its original Tesla Factory in Fremont, California, Giga Nevada (which soon will produce Tesla Semi), Giga Shanghai in China, Giga Berlin in Germany and Giga Texas. There is also a gigafactory in New York, but it does not produce electric vehicles. There are also many smaller plants related to other purposes.
As we can see below, the factory in Mexico will be pretty large - probably comparable to the Giga Texas site - although Tesla does not provide any details/numbers for now.
Currently, Tesla's theoretical manufacturing capacity is estimated at around 2 million units annually (globally), while the long-term goal is to achieve 20 million units per year.
It means that at least several more gigafactories might be announced in the coming years - spreading around the world to capitalize on local production.
Mexico recently successfully attracted other EV-related investments, including BMW's next-generation electric car project.
We guess that the relatively close proximity to the United States, trade agreements that make BEVs produced in Mexico eligible for federal tax credit incentive (under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 - IRA), attractive business opportunities, and resources, make Mexico a very interesting place to invest.
Those who have been following Tesla for years also remember that the company was considering Mexico as its first production site - before the GM-Toyota NUMMI plant become available for sale in California in 2010 to handle the Tesla Model S introduction in 2012.
