News on Tesla’s New Factories in Mexico, India, & Netherlands to Build 9 Million Cars a Year

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One of our readers complained today that we were reporting on big price cuts to Tesla vehicles, and clear trends those price cuts might relate to — dropping Tesla sales. He was concerned that we were no longer focused on covering cleantech (or “clean teck” as he put it). I responded that “I’d love to report on all the Tesla factories being build to produce 4–5 million cars,” but I cannot since that is no longer happening as it was supposed to by around this time — since Tesla has not been achieving its previously announced target of growing by 50% a year.

Tesla had 499,550 sales in 2020. If it grew by 50% a year from then through 2025, it would be at nearly 9 million annual vehicle sales. However, last year it had 1,789,226 vehicle sales, down 1.1% from 1,808,581 vehicle sales in 2023.

A few years ago, Elon Musk was talking about building many more gigafactories. Plans were for one in Mexico, another probably in Asia, and another probably in Europe. In 2022, Musk said Tesla could probably eventually build 10–12 gigafactories around the world. It currently has one in China, one in Texas, one in Germany, and — though it’s a different kind of factory — one in Nevada.

If things were going according to plan, Tesla would most definitely be well underway building a gigafactory in Mexico, and would most certainly be doing initial work on new gigafactories in Asia and Europe — perhaps in India and the Netherlands (hence the headline). However, as I already noted, Tesla isn’t close to being on schedule with its 2020 or even 2022 plans. Actually, its sales decline in 2024 was counter to guidance earlier in 2024 that Tesla would have sales growth last year.

So, here’s the news on Tesla’s new factories in Mexico, India, & Netherlands to build 9 million cars a year: nada.

I’d love to report on massive EV sales growth at a pure clean company like Tesla. … Well, actually, we are doing that as well! See:

It’s just that Tesla isn’t an EV growth company at the moment. While the overall EV market has been growing in the US and around the world, Tesla has been declining. The facts may burn, they may sting, but those are the facts.

If Tesla goes bankrupt (unlikely but possible in the long run of course), would it make sense for CleanTechnica to not cover that because it’s a very bad news story for cleantech? If we were covering the smartphone market and Apple smartphone sales were declining while Apple was offering more and more price discounts and incentives, would it make sense to not cover that?

Tesla sales are struggling right now. That is a fact, and a big story in the EV market. Will they rebound? Possibly! And we will certainly cover that if they do! Will Tesla solve Full Self Driving and roll out robotaxis and then start building a dozen gigafactories? Maybe. If it does, will we cover it? Obviously. But will we also cover it if FSD robotaxi targets are missed for the 9th year in a row? Yup. Should we have ignored that they were missed for 8 years? Obviously not, right?

Also, if we are covering Tesla’s sales decline and increasingly desperate efforts to attract more buyers, should we not cover the potential reasons for the challenges? That wouldn’t be very useful, would it? Sure, if we were only Tesla cheerleaders and wanted to pretend everything was rosy in the world of Tesla, we could just hype up Tesla’s already impressive sales and ignore the issues. But I think there are other places to go for that if you want truly biased coverage of the company that makes you feel better about your TSLA shares.

Tesla says it has growth drivers for 2025 sales — the new Model Y, the Cybertruck, and a coming cheaper model or two. Let’s see if that’s how things play out. At the moment, based on previous statements, I think we can’t just go on Tesla guidance. Though, it has become clear that a lot of people prefer living in a fantasyland, and do not like when you disturb that with real-world facts and common sense.