Tesla picks Austin, Tulsa as finalists for new US factory

Tesla has picked Austin, Texas, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, as finalists for its new U.S. assembly plant, a person briefed on the matter said Friday.

The person says company officials visited Tulsa in the past week and were shown two sites.

It wasn’t clear if there were any other finalists in the mix. The person, who didn’t want to be identified because the site selection process is secret, said no final decision has been made.

The new factory will be Tesla’s biggest so far. The electric car maker has said it wants the factory to be in the center of the country and closer to East Coast markets.

The stakes are high for state and local governments, which covet auto factories because they have a lot of workers and normally pay well, generating income and property taxes.

Tesla’s current U.S. vehicle assembly factory is in Fremont, California, which employs 10,000 workers. The company has a second U.S. factory in Reno, where it builds batteries for its vehicles and employs about 6,500 people. It also has a factory in Shanghai and another one under construction in Germany.

Companies typically use proposals from finalists to bargain for the best package of tax breaks, site investments and other incentives.

The new factory would build Tesla’s upcoming “Cybertruck” as well as be a second site to build the Model Y small SUV.

On the company’s earnings conference call in April, Musk said the site of the company’s third U.S. factory could be announced within a month. Musk calls his plants “Gigafactories.” (AP)