NY State Officials Are Pleasantly Surprised By Tesla’s Buffalo Factory
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Sean Ryan, of the New York State Assembly, says that he is “pleasantly surprised” at Tesla’s progress at its factory in Buffalo. He toured it on Friday. “The factory is built out. It has complete lines running, product moving around, people are there, so it’s really transformed itself into what we’ve been hoping for,” he says. He also adds that he has to report pleasant surprise. This is in regard to the last time he was there, 15 months ago, when he saw a lot of empty space.
I was pleasantly surprised by my recent visit to the Tesla plant. It was encouraging to see Solar roofs, batteries, and charging stations being built in the facility. Tesla reports over 1100 workers at the plant and they say they will hit 1460 by the April deadline. pic.twitter.com/33aSuRdQLC
— Senator Sean Ryan (@SenSeanRyan) February 8, 2020
Ryan said on the WBEN Extras radio show that during his last visit, one part of the factory looked like it was more of a warehouse, but today there are a dozen manufacturing lines with people working on them. The scene he described was any typical busy factory filled with people working.
“We’ve been holding our breath since we put that big bet down on Tesla. They had a slow start and I was worried, as we’re approaching this spring, [if] they were going to hit their deadlines, but they’re right on track,” Ryan said on the show. The deadline is that Tesla must hire 1,460 people by April or face a state penalty of more than $40 million.
This good news seems to have hurt the egos of Tesla’s critics, who have expressed belief the Buffalo factory wasn’t hiring anyone and that it’s fraud.
“We've been holding our breath since we put that big bet down on Tesla. They had a slow start, and I was worried as we're appoaching this spring they were going to hit their deadlines, but they're right on track,"
RIP #GigaBuffalo FUD https://t.co/YwARdmdkjo
— 🐶 𝔼𝕒𝕣𝕝 of FrunkPuppy 🐶 (@28delayslater) February 8, 2020
We’ll see soon how much progress “Gigafactory 2” or “Giga Buffalo” has been making. Aside from updates like this, we expect more factory tours for the media to be coming. Also, Elon Musk has plans to host a public event there soon:
Tesla April company talk will be from our Giga New York factory, where we make SolarGlass & several other products. Will also offer customer & media tours.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 10, 2020
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