New York State Built Elon Musk a $1 Billion Factory. ‘It Was a Bad Deal.’ (The Wall Street Journal)
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Tesla’s factory in Buffalo was built by New York state. Photo Credit: Malik Rainey for The Wall Street Journal
New Tesla facility in Buffalo was supposed to house a huge solar-panel operation, but the project hasn’t turned out as planned.
BUFFALO, N.Y.—New York spent nearly $1 billion over the past decade on Elon Musk’s ambitious plan for what was supposed to be the largest solar-panel factory in the Western Hemisphere, one of the largest-ever public cash outlays of its kind.
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A state comptroller’s audit found just 54 cents of economic benefit for every subsidy dollar spent on the factory, which rose on the site of an old steel mill. External auditors have written down nearly all of New York’s investment.
“It was a bad deal,” said state Sen. Sean Ryan, a Democrat who represents Buffalo. “A cautionary tale is you can’t give governors too much power to get on the phone with egotistical billionaires.”
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State Sen. Ryan last visited the site just before the Covid pandemic. He and another public official who was on the tour later said that the activity they witnessed didn’t look like full-scale manufacturing work.
“We still want to wake up tomorrow and hear that Tesla is really going to invest in this factory, and we’re gonna have the jobs and the ripple economy that we were promised,” Ryan said in a recent interview. “So, everyone’s reluctant to dance on Tesla’s grave because we still want it to happen.”
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