The first manufacturer of electric vehicles, Tesla, will invest some "5,000 million dollars" in Mexico to build the "largest factory" in the world, the Mexican government announced on Tuesday, anticipating an announcement that the CEO of the company will soon confirm. , Elon Musk.
"We have attracted to Mexico an investment of more or less 5,000 million dollars for the installation of the largest electric vehicle factory in the world," said an undersecretary of Foreign Relations, Martha Delgado, in a video on Twitter.
"This investment has been completed after 14 months of work (...) We continue working," he continued.
"I'm heading to Austin, Texas, to attend the announcement that @elonmusk, CEO of @Tesla, will make about his investments in 2023," adds Delgado.
The announcement detailed the first details given that same morning by the President of the Republic, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Tesla will install its factory in Monterrey, in the north of the country, near the border with the United States, according to the head of state. "This is going to mean a considerable investment and many jobs," López Obrador continued, adding that the company would give more details as of Wednesday.
"I want to thank Mr. Elon Musk because he has been very respectful and very attentive. He has understood the importance of taking into account the problem of water scarcity," added the left-wing nationalist president, adding that he had spoken twice with the CEO from Tesla.
"There is a first commitment, which is the use of recycled water in the entire manufacturing process of electric cars."
Located just over 200 km from the border with the United States, Monterrey is one of the economic and industrial engines of Mexico, a member of the OECD. The region suffered a severe drought last year. Local authorities rationed the population's water supply in July.
This will be Tesla's third factory abroad and the first in Latin America.
Elon Musk's company already has a "gigafactory" in Germany, near Berlin, and another in China, in Shanghai.
At the beginning of February, the German BMW announced an investment of 870 million dollars to manufacture electric cars in Mexico.
Mexico has potential lithium deposits in the northern state of Sonora. The Mexican president signed a decree on February 18 nationalizing possible future lithium production -considered "property of the nation"- "so that foreigners, Russia, China, and the United States cannot exploit it," according to him. .
Mexico is the seventh world producer of automobiles, with three million vehicles by 2021, according to the Mexican Association of the Automotive Industry (AMIA).
The German Volkswagen and Audi, the American General Motors and Ford, and the Japanese Honda, Nissan and Toyota have vehicle or engine manufacturing units in the country, a signatory to the free trade agreement with the US and Canada and a gateway to Latin America.
South Korea's Hyundai and Stellantis (the group created by the 2021 merger of Peugeot-Citroën and Fiat-Chrysler) also have plants in Mexico.
Foreign investment in the automotive sector amounted to 5.3 billion dollars in 2021, according to AMIA. The automotive industry represented 3.5% of GDP and 930,000 jobs that year, according to the same source.
In 2022, direct foreign investment in Mexico amounted to 35.3 billion dollars, 12% more than the previous year, according to the Ministry of Economy.
The United States is by far the largest investor in Mexico (16 billion dollars) ahead of Canada (3.8 billion).
In 2021, Mexico was among the ten countries in the world that received the most foreign investment, according to the investment company BlackRock.
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