Elon Musk tweeted on a Tuesday in March 2020 that Tesla was scouting sites for a new factory in “central USA,” and that the Cybertruck would be built there. Within hours, officials from several central states were replying to offer meetings.
Oklahoma’s Secretary of Commerce and the Cherokee Nation both made pitches. The Chamber of Commerce in Joplin, Missouri, offered land and incentives. Texas, which Musk had floated before, now looked less like a sure thing, since “scouting” implies a list.
A fifth Giga site
Musk called the planned plant the “Cybertruck Gigafactory.” He had also said Tesla would stop numbering its factories and name them “Giga (area)” instead, so the new one would likely carry the name of its state. Electrek counted it as Tesla’s fifth gigafactory, after Nevada, New York, Shanghai and Berlin. Fremont, the main final-assembly site, doesn’t carry the label.
It was the first clear word on where the truck would be made. Until then, nobody outside the company knew whether Tesla would try to squeeze it into Fremont, which was running out of room.
Musk added that Tesla was looking at “Model Y production for East Coast too.” He later confirmed the central US factory would build Model Ys for the East Coast.
Texas and the reservations
A Texas site would have been awkward. The state bans Tesla from selling cars directly, so the company could have built vehicles there that it couldn’t sell there. Electrek speculated that Musk’s wider phrasing might mean the search had broadened to other states, or might be a nudge to the Texas legislature. SpaceX already has a facility in South Texas.
Demand was part of the case. Tesla reported a quarter of a million reservations in under a week after the Cybertruck reveal, and crowdsourced estimates at the time put the total closer to half a million. Electrek argued the simple design should be easy to build, and that a dedicated plant might point to far higher volume than Tesla had first planned.
A heartland factory could also help with sales. Middle America is truck country, and one open question was whether pickup drivers would give up their F-150s and Silverados for an electric truck. Local jobs, one report noted, might be among the better arguments.
The schedule was tight. First Cybertrucks were due late the following year, in 2021, while Tesla was also building a plant in Germany on a similar timeline.
Sources
- Tesla plans to build the Cybertruck in 'central USA' — possibly Texas?
- Blog – Tesla Considering Cybertruck Factory in Central U.S.
