Mexico’s President announced that electric-vehicle (EV) maker Tesla will be building a new plant in the country and has agreed to use recycled water to not further the country’s water-scarcity issue.
Key Details
- Tesla will build a new EV plant in Monterrey, Mexico, according to Mexico’s president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who is often called AMLO.
- Monterrey is an industrial city outside the U.S. border and has been a city Tesla has been considering for a while.
- AMLO says that Tesla CEO Elon Musk agreed to use recycled water throughout the whole plant to help combat the country’s water-scarcity issue.
Why it’s news
Tesla is the number-one EV brand globally and has been creating new manufacturing plants to keep up with the high demand for its vehicles. The company recently announced its next stop for a new plant—Mexico.
The company produced 1,369,611 Tesla EVs in 2022 and delivered 1,313,851, according to the company’s website.
Tesla has officially announced that its next manufacturing plant will be located in Monterrey, Mexico, an industrial city nine hours from Texas.
Mexico’s president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, says that the project will be a significant investment but has not specified what type of factory the plant will be. It is unclear whether the factory will produce car or battery components.
Tesla has talked about adding a plant to Mexico for some time, but the country has suffered from droughts which have led to low amounts of safe water, and Mexico is now in a state of water scarcity.
AMLO feared that if the Tesla factory were built, it would use an immense amount of the little safe water left, but Musk adhered to all of the concerns from AMLO and agreed to use recycled water throughout the whole plant.
U.S. President Joe Biden previously passed a law that only EVs produced in the U.S. would receive a tax credit, but the law has exceptions for vehicles made in Mexico and Canada, thus making this new factory eligible.
Exact details of the plant have yet to be released, but it is expected that Tesla will release more information at its news conference this week explaining why the company chose the location and what its next steps are.