Tesla hopes to get its Texas factory up and running by the of the year, according to filings with the state of Texas. Those documents indicate the project’s budget is just over a billion dollars.
Electrek first spotted the documents, filed Friday with the Texas Department of Licensing and Registration.
Each of the filings feature a completion date of December 31, which is in line with Tesla aiming to start production by the end of the year.
The filings also mention a budget for each section:
- Body-in-white: $182 million
- General Assembly: $493 million
- Paint: $126 million
- Casting: $109 million
- Stamping: $150 million
The project adds up to just over $1 billion in costs.
That $1 billion figure is more or less what Tesla had previously said the project would cost. Though, if demand for Tesla remains heavy even as it continues to increase capacity, you can expect that the plant might grow even bigger, much like how BMW started relatively small in South Carolina before turning into the colossus it is today, making almost half-a-million cars a year.
Tesla has also moved its headquarters to Texas, which may or may not be related to the fact that the state has no income tax, and CEO Elon Musk may or may not want to cash in on that. Or it could just be that Texas really is the next phase in Tesla’s growth, having, at this point, well outgrown the startup phase, and like almost every other established automaker, a multinational concern with manufacturing bases across the world.
Either way, I do give Tesla some credit for entering a state where pickup trucks and loyalty to Chevy, Ford, and Ram — choose your fighter — are a religion. Tesla has to have some good-sized stones to show them the Cybertruck and say that they plan to build it on Texas soil, too. Tesla will also try to sell the Cybertruck to Texans, too, though I suspect most buyers will be Angelenos with too much money and not enough sense. It would be nothing short of stunning if Tesla is able to beat Chevy, Ford, and Ram in Texas, on the Big Three’s home turf. The haters never believe.
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