- Tesla confirmed plans to establish a Mexican factory in March 2023.
- The facility was supposed to build vehicles underpinned by Tesla’s next-generation platform.
- Musk paused development of the site in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election.
Officials from Mexico are eager to meet with Elon Musk about Tesla’s production plans for the country after Donald Trump won the US election last week. Musk, who has supported Trump since the assassination attempt on him in July, had originally announced Tesla would establish a Gigafactory in Mexico, but those plans are in jeopardy.
The planned factory was originally confirmed in March 2023 and came after months of meetings between Musk and local officials. The new site was to be located near Monterrey in the state of Nuevo León and handle the production of one of the automaker’s planned ‘next gen’ vehicles. However, in July, Musk said Tesla had paused plans for the factory after Trump began touting the idea of leaning heavily into massive tariffs on imported vehicles.
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While recently speaking on a Mexican radio show, as reported by Reuters, the nation’s Economy Minister, Marcelo Ebrard, said he’s “going to set up a meeting with [Musk] soon so that he tells me exactly what he’s thinking and see what we can do so this project moves forward.”
Given Musk’s newfound fondness of Trump, and the President-elect’s promise during his campaign to slap vehicles imported from Mexico with tariffs of 200% or more, it seems unlikely that Tesla will be able to justify investing in a Mexican plant. Tesla never confirmed which markets it intended to sell its Mexican-built vehicles into, but the United States and Canada would have been the most logical choices.
However, since pressing pause on its Mexican plant, Tesla has changed its production plans for its next-generation, ‘unboxed’ manufacturing process that will underpin the recently unveiled electric Robotaxi, also known as the Cybercab. This vehicle will be manufactured in Texas alongside other existing Tesla products.
Even though Mexico seems unlikely to get a Tesla factory, newly-electric president Claudia Sheinbaum does want a cheap EV to be built in the country. Last month, Sheinbaum said the government would work with local Mexican companies and researchers to try and develop a compact and cheap EV for the market, Fortune reports.