Skip to main content

Elon Musk Responds To Mike Siegel About Tesla Giga Texas Figures

Tesla CEO has responded with figures to accusations made on Twitter, where he was criticized about the financial amounts provided by the State of Texas to open the new Tesla Giga Factory in Austin.
Tesla Cybertruck, courtesy of Tesla Inc.

Tesla is in a global expansion process, as just a year ago it started manufacturing at Giga Shanghai. In the coming days the first electric cars produced at the new Giga Factory plant in Texas will be released, about which Musk has already spoken: specifically on the first raw numbers and data about the factory, as well as the expected production.

These first data have been revealed by the CEO through his personal Twitter account, as usual. In a tweet Musk specifies the investment cost of the Texas Gigafactory, which was 10 billion dollars. This investment in Austin will result in production levels even higher than those in the current Chinese factory in Shanghai, which by the way is worth mentioning that already exceeds the half a million cars per year production level.
In addition to this figure, and in the same tweet, Elon Musk affirms that this new factory will employ more than 20,000 people directly, and more than 100,000 indirectly. This number of direct workers doubles the current capacity of the veteran Fremont factory, which fulfills its purpose with 10,000 employees, while Giga Shanghai has very similar numbers of direct jobs as those of Giga Texas.

This tweet has come in response to one originally generated by Mike Siegel, a politician from the state of Texas, in which he blames Elon Musk for the investment of 60 million dollars that the American state has made to encourage the transfer of the factory to land located near the city of Austin.

Many Musk followers have supported him, insisting that this subsidy is not really a big thing, since it does not represent more than 6% of the total investment cost of Giga Texas. Many have mentioned the stimulating effect on the local economy that will be provided by opening this new Giga Factory, and which will provide multiple jobs for local residents and will encourage investment by new companies around the new Gigafactory.
Elon Musk also specifies in this thread of responses to Siegel's original tweet that the Texas government has already collected an economic amount greater than that provided to Tesla, through taxes paid in order to set up the new factory, ranging from work and service contracts to other taxes incurred by acquiring the land on which the plant is installed.

Tesla Giga Factory, courtesy of Tesla Inc.

I personally think Mr. Siegel is missing the point, as coal, oil, and natural gas received $5.9 trillion in subsidies in 2020 alone - or roughly $11 million every minute - according to a new analysis from the International Monetary Fund. That is peanuts compared to anything we are discussing here, and again I really think that the focus should be on those 5.9 TRILLION subsidies to the fossil fuel industry and not on local business incentives which amount to almost nothing (that is, when compared to "big oil" numbers).

The new Gigafactory in Austin is scheduled to start production in the next few days, as Tesla's board of directors assured that it would be put into operation before the end of 2021. Production of the Tesla Model Y for the American market will initially come out from this plant, as well as the Tesla Cybertruck and the Tesla Semi.
What do you think? Please let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.

Images courtesy of Tesla Inc.

Nico Caballero is the VP of Finance of Cogency Power, specializing in solar energy. He also holds a Diploma in Electric Cars from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, and enjoys doing research about Tesla and EV batteries. He can be reached at @NicoTorqueNews on Twitter. Nico covers Tesla and electric vehicle latest happenings at Torque News.

Electric Vehicle News and Reviews
New Vehicle Reviews
Tesla
Tesla Cybertruck