Elon Musk considers a Tesla project in France "very likely": "There's a lot of talent ».
Eva Deschamps / June 21, 2023
In an interview broadcast on Monday, Tesla boss Elon Musk reiterated his interest in France, deeming a future "major" project in the country "very likely", without confirming the factory location desired by Emmanuel Macron.
It's "very likely that Tesla will do something very important in France in the next few years", said the boss of this pioneering electric car company in an interview recorded on Friday on the sidelines of the VivaTech trade show in Paris.
The billionaire met Emmanuel Macron on the same day, for the third time in just a few months, with the French president hoping to convince him to set up a Tesla battery factory in France.
At the Choose France summit in Versailles in mid-May, the billionaire had already promised that Tesla would make "significant investments in France ».
For the moment, nothing has come of it, and his choice could also be Spain, almost four years after he chose Berlin for the electric carmaker's first plant in Europe.
France is Europe's second-largest economy, there's a lot of talent in France" and "people from all over the world" want to come here, argued the controversial Twitter and Space X boss. Its capital, Paris, is a "very, very beautiful city, and I think that's an attractive factor", he added.
When asked about the possibility of France reserving the ecological bonus for the purchase of an electric car for vehicles manufactured in Europe, Elon Musk replied that "it's a good thing to localize production ».
It's better for the environment to produce locally". But "electric vehicles must be able to function, must be viable in the long term without subsidies. Subsidies won't last forever," he said.