Tesla's Arrival to Nuevo Leon Is Not a Coincidence

On March 1, Elon Musk, the most successful businessman in the world, announced the investment of a new Tesla gigafactory, which will be located near Monterrey. Although in the days prior  many media, and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador himself, had commented on it, we had to wait for the formal announcement by the company. It will be an investment of US$5 billion that may reach US$10 billion in future stages. It is, by far, the largest foreign investment that Mexico will have in 2023.

On March 1, we also commemorated the start of the Nuevo Leon Automotive Cluster, or Claut. On a similar day  in 2007, a group of businessmen, academics and the minister for economic development of Nuevo Leon decided to found a civil association (AC) to boost the competitiveness of the Nuevo Leon automotive sector. This AC would take the form of a cluster, by including among its associates companies from the automotive industry, academic and government institutions, following the triple helix collaboration model. The founding Council of Claut was chaired by Enrique Zambrano, then CEO of Grupo Proeza, Metalsa's holding company. The directors general of Navistar, Arnecom, Grupo IMSA, Nemak, Vitro and Ficosa also participated as well as the rectors of the Tecnológico de Monterrey and the Autonomous University of Nuevo León. On behalf of the government, Minister of Economic Development Alejandro Páez and the Director General of the Institute for Innovation and Technology Transfer Antonio Zárate participated in the Founding Council.

The vision of the Founding Council of Claut was to create an institution formed by the triple helix, which would promote actions to strengthen the competitiveness of the automotive sector in Nuevo Leon. The goal was to achieve a more robust ecosystem  so that the state could attract investment from a light-vehicle assembly company that would generate business for other companies in the region. Having trained personnel, a reliable and complete chain of local suppliers, and the best suppliers in the world, we would reach a better level of competitiveness that would make the region attractive to receive investment from one of the leading global assembly companies. The company the state hoped to attract was Toyota, although it was open to any other that sought to invest in our country.

Throughout these 16 years, Claut has worked with its companies, academic and government institutions to solve common problems and carry out projects that benefit the entire automotive ecosystem in the state of Nuevo Leon. With the universities and technical schools of the cluster, training programs have been created for technicians in electromechanical maintenance, maintenance and manufacturing of dies and plastic injection molds, training of internal instructors, design engineers, energy leaders and training of managers and directors. Two Claut universities created the Automotive Design Engineer program. With the support of Conacyt, the Master of Science in the Automotive Industry was created. The Driven Center was formed to train specialists in design and simulation, and also to provide engineering services to companies in the automotive sector, inside and outside our region. In 2018, the Tooling Cluster began to promote local workshops as well as to strengthen the technical training of toolmakers for our industry. Academic institutions were equipped for the training of technicians and engineers specialized in the tool industry. All these initiatives benefit the common good of the automotive industry in the region, solving common problems and synergizing to create shared capabilities for the benefit of all.

In Claut’s collaborative model, the aim is to bring together experts from the companies in each of the key areas of organizations. The cluster work committees have become a space for collaboration between company peers. At our monthly meetings, they start by sharing good practices and seek to identify areas of collaboration where they can address problems through the Cluster or identify opportunities to create synergies among several. Some learn from others, and there is always something that someone is an expert in and can share, as well as something that one can learn from another and put into practice. As the "communication vessels" of good practices, companies are strengthened, improving their capacities and creating a culture of continuous improvement and innovation.

In the last two years, we have received significant investments in Nuevo Leon, with a highlight being the Tesla suppliers that have settled here to supply the Austin plant. Quanta is the supplier of Tesla's brain and settled in Santa Catarina. Forvia, a company created from the merger of Faurecia and Hella, set up its plant in Apodaca to manufacture vehicle interiors. ZF installed a plant and a Research and Development Center also in Apodaca, and one of its main customers is Tesla. All these new investments decided on Nuevo Leon because it is an ecosystem with trained personnel and because it has a non-local supply base. They found the automobile industry of Nuevo Leon organized, and this facilitated their decision to settle in this state.

Because of all this, we say that the arrival of Tesla was  not a coincidence. The automotive industry in Nuevo Leon already has many years of experience and in the last few years, it has learned the secret of competitiveness, which is collaboration. The automotive ecosystem is prepared to receive large investments, such as that of Tesla. Now, the challenge is to be able to move toward new technologies, and it will be a great help  that the world leader in electric vehicles is now in Mexico and in Nuevo Leon. We hope that soon we will be able to work closely with this great automaker and that Claut will continue to be the space for collaboration for the automotive industry in the region