Reno Selected For Tesla Motors Battery Factory

First time accepted submitter Mikenan writes Tesla has finally decided that it will build its battery "gigafactory" in Nevada, sources say. "That's a go, but they are still negotiating the specifics of the contract," a source within the Nevada's governor's office told CNBC Wednesday afternoon. The source noted that it could be a week before the deal is official. Nevada is planning a press conference Thursday in Carson City.

California Betrayed

[Tailhook]

Nevada; No corporate income tax. Far fewer and less effective environmental and labor pressure groups. How selfish. Who does this Elon think he is refusing to be suckered in with environmental rule waivers [latimes.com]?

I suspect it's going to take a lot more of this kind of corporate profiteering before the bloom comes off the Telsa rose around here though, and my poor karma will suffer a lot more hits — because fanbois will be fanbois.

Re:Stop Making Up Words!

[sumdumass]

Hmm.. "Prefix".. I'm not sure that word means what you think it means. At least the two examples you gave do not fit.

That's not what MotherJones says

[Tailhook]

From 11 months [motherjones.com] ago:

But make no mistake: Tesla still relies on subsidies to stay in the black. Its first-quarter profit, a modest $11 million, hinged on the $68 million it earned selling clean-air credits under a California program that requires automakers to either produce a given number of zero-emission vehicles or satisfy the mandate in some other way. For the second quarter, Tesla announced a $26 million profit (based on one method of accounting), but again the profit hinged on $51 million in ZEV credits; by year's end, these credit sales could net Tesla a whopping $250 million. There are also generous tax credits and rebates for electric-car buyers: $7,500 from the federal government and up to $5,000 if you live in California.

Beyond that, leaving out the HUGE tax credits buyers get for purchasing Telsa cars (10-17% of the price of a Model S) is intellectually dishonest on your part; Tesla would sell far fewer cars and at lower prices with out those extreme tax credits.

Re:Stop Making Up Words!

[kamapuaa]

Am I missing something? Reno is a ten hour drive [google.com] from Mexico.

Re:Another building full of robots?

[sobiloff]

Whoops, 6,500 direct factory jobs, 9,000 associated jobs.

http://www.rgj.com/story/money/reno-rebirth/2014/06/15/reno-rebirth-tesla-game-changer/10406441/

Re:Stop Making Up Words!

[lgw]

OK, obviously there' selection bias in play here, but I've never worked for a large dev shop that preferred HBB workers over workers that didn't require sponsorship. There are certainly H1B-only shops that exist (in defiance of the law) to exploit young workers, but those are contract-only shops (they only do contract work for other businesses). If you're keeping it legal, H1B workers aren't any cheaper (including legal costs).

I have worked for places that had 80-90% of their developers working in India and/or China. That saves money. I'm happy to compete with anyone who works and lives in the US - we all have the same expenses (and I don't send half my paycheck back home).

None of which has to do with manufacturing, of course. Tesla does use some H1Bs for software development (friend of mine's wife works there), but AFAIK they're like most places and pay competitively.
 

Re:That's not what MotherJones says

[kellymcdonald78]

It's possible to generate 25% margin on each car, yet still have the company post a loss (Learn to read an Income Statement). All it requires is the company to re-invest all of that margin (and more) say... building a Gigafactory or other R&D or expansion activities. When you're in a growth phase like Tesla and your overriding objective is to scale the business, you would expect the company to be running on the edge of profitability, simply because every dollar in profit is a dollar that can be used to fund your expansion.

Re:California Betrayed

[Daetrin]

Well if California was actually betrayed by anyone, the first blame would have to fall at the feet of the state legislature, which failed to vote on the incentive package before the latest session ended. When the California governor promised Tesla the incentives the company responded with interest, and a few days after those incentives disappeared in puff of legislative smoke Tesla announced their decision to go with Nevada.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/... [usatoday.com]

When the topic first came up on Slashdot [slashdot.org] a number of people seemed to think offering such incentives was a bad idea. Maybe the California legislature agreed with that reasoning, but if they've made any statements about why they did what they did i haven't heard about it.