Tesla: Buffalo workers grow as operations shift from solar energy

Tesla Inc. added more than 100 jobs at its Buffalo factory last year, even as its operations have shifted away from solar energy.

The company, in a report submitted to the state, said it had 1,734 full-time workers at its South Park Avenue factory at the end of 2022, along with another 107 part-time employees.

That tops the 1,460 jobs that Tesla needed to avoid a $41.2 million penalty from the state, which used $950 million in taxpayer funds to build and partially equip the South Buffalo factory.

And the company said in the report it has continued to hire, with employment totaling 1,948 as of Jan. 23, with plans to add another 130 workers by the end of January. That works out to about $468,000 in taxpayer subsidies per job.

“This past year has been another excellent year for Tesla in Buffalo and throughout New York state,” said Jeff Munson, the treasurer for the Tesla affiliate that operates the Buffalo plant.

The report is subject to verification from state officials, and Tesla submitted a revised version of the employment report to state officials earlier this month after the company said it discovered that it had double counted a small number of jobs outside of the Buffalo Niagara region in 2021 and again initially last year. Tesla said it has 528 full-time employees in locations across New York other than the Buffalo factory.

The report did not provide details on what type of work the new Tesla employees are doing in Buffalo or provide any insight into the type of work now going on there.

But previous reports indicate that the mix of jobs at the Buffalo plant is far different from what was originally envisioned when the state paid more than $950 million to build and partially equip a factory that was expected to focus on solar energy.

Tesla still does work on its solar roof at the South Buffalo facility, but the complex and costly product has been difficult to develop and install, keeping production rates low. Tesla executives have not discussed the solar roof or its production in any detail during quarterly conference calls with investors and analysts in more than a year.

To reach its job target, which calls for Tesla to employ a minimum of 1,460 workers in Buffalo, the company has been shifting other types of work to the local plant.

The company is making electronic components for its electric vehicle Superchargers and inverters for some of its battery products in Buffalo.

It also has hired hundreds of people to work on its autonomous driving programs for electric vehicles, although many of those positions are for data annotation work that only requires a high school diploma.

Tesla’s agreement with the state, part of the state’s Buffalo Billion economic development initiative, only requires the company to have a certain number of jobs in Buffalo. It does not include any provisions on the type of job or how much they pay.

State officials said they were reviewing the report.

“We have received the report, but we are in the process of doing our due diligence,” said Pamm Lent, a spokesperson for Empire State Development.

The Buffalo plant no longer makes conventional solar panels as part of a partnership with Panasonic, which closed its manufacturing operation before the pandemic after Tesla diverted resources away from its solar business in its all-out push to launch its Model 3 electric vehicle.

Instead, Tesla now is concentrating its solar energy business on its complex and hard-to-install solar roof — a shift that prompted the state to sell or scrap equipment that it paid more than $207 million to acquire for the plant. State officials said those sales were expected to bring in proceeds that were a fraction of the original cost.

With the solar roof still selling at what analysts believe are relatively low levels, Tesla has shifted other types of work to the Buffalo plant.

The data annotation work is growing rapidly, with teams of employees processing data that is being used by Tesla to develop its self-driving vehicle capabilities.

The Buffalo factory also makes versions of the cabinets that house the charging equipment funneling power to individual charging stations, called Posts, which deliver the highvoltage electricity to vehicles.

The factory makes the air- or liquid-cooled cables that connect the Supercharger to vehicles. The liquid-cooled cables allow for the fastest charging speeds.

Tesla officials previously have said the Buffalo factory also makes the company’s Powerstage product — an inverter that converts electricity from direct current to alternating current and back again, as needed.

The Powerstages are used in Tesla’s Megapack large-scale battery storage systems and other power electronics products.