Amid the ongoing debate about the size of Elon Musk’s taxes, the Tesla CEO has announced that the company plans to invest over $10 billion in Gigafactory Texas, which will eventually employ 20,000 workers.

As always, the announcement came via Twitter, as a reply to a message from Tesla pundit Sawyer Merritt who pointed out that Giga Texas will bring over 10,000 jobs to the area and will get to host Tesla’s corporate headquarters, not to mention the boost it will give to the local economy and suppliers. 

Merritt’s tweet referenced a message from Mike Siegel, a Texas civil rights lawyer and Democratic Party candidate for US Congress, who criticized the fact that Tesla received over $60 million in subsidies to move in the area. Elon Musk’s response was very short and on point.

“Giga Texas is a $10B+ investment over time, generating at least 20k direct & 100k indirect jobs.”

 

If this huge investment and job creation turns out to be accurate, it sounds like the $60 million tax breaks granted by the Travis County and the Del Valle school district will be well worth it.

Recent filings revealed that Tesla is spending $1 billion on Giga Texas, but that is just for the initial phase of the project. Once the Cybertruck and Semi enter production alongside the Model Y, the investment is expected to expand significantly.

Production at Giga Texas should start any day now, with Tesla planning to kick off production at the facility with the Model Y, its most popular vehicle at the moment. The Austin plant is essential to Tesla’s expansion plans, especially now that production at Giga Berlin is being delayed over hearings pertaining to its water supply.

Currently, Tesla relies exclusively on the Fremont plant to meet increasing demand from the US market, but the California facility can only build about 500,000 EVs per year. This has led to delivery timelines close to a year for some of the company’s most popular vehicles. 

Once the Austin factory is fully ramped up, it’s expected to more than double Tesla’s output in the United States. The EV maker maintains that it will start Model Y production at Giga Texas by the end of 2021. Here's the most recent flyover video (December 16, 2021) of the facility, courtesy of Jeff Roberts' YouTube channel.

 

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