Tesla says early Nevada hiring projections outdated; employment on track at gigafactory

CARSON CITY — Tesla Motor Co. on Thursday said a report that it missed hiring projections was based on outdated information and that the company is meeting target employment numbers at its massive battery factory in Northern Nevada.

“As the state of Nevada itself has indicated, Tesla is on track at the Gigafactory, where we are creating thousands of new jobs,” a company spokeswoman said. Job numbers cited in the report are from almost six months ago, she said.

“Today, Tesla employs more than 850 full-time employees and there are more than 1,700 construction workers at the Gigafactory.”

An independent audit by Grant Thornton for the April-June quarter said there were 331 full-time workers at the battery factory being built east of Sparks. That number is far below the 1,700 the state projected would be employed there by this time in an analysis presented in 2014, when lawmakers approved a $1.3 billion incentive package to lure the project to Nevada.

The Tesla spokeswoman said those projections were made in 2013 and assumed the plant would be under construction in early 2014. Instead, construction on the factory didn’t begin until almost 2015.

“The study’s findings should be adjusted to reflect this discrepancy,” the company said.

“We are on schedule with our production hiring and investment numbers,” the spokeswoman said in an email. “Tesla expects to hire more than 1,000 additional full-time employees at the Gigafactory in the first half of 2017.”

A spokeswoman for the Governor’s Office of Economic Development on Tuesday said Tesla also changed its construction strategy since the state projections were made, reflecting a phased-build approach so parts of the project could be up and running while construction continued.

Tesla, the electric car company led by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, is building the $5 billion lithium-ion battery factory in partnership with Panasonic Energy Corp. of North America.

Musk has said the battery production is essential to making Tesla’s Model 3 sports car less expensive and available to a wider market.

Panasonic, in partnership with Nevada JobConnect, is hosting a job fair Saturday in Las Vegas to recruit employees willing to move to Northern Nevada to work at the factory. The event will be held from noon to 6 p.m. at the JobConnect office, 3405 Maryland Parkway.

Panasonic spokesman Jim Reilly in an email late Thursday said recruiting efforts are ongoing “with the aim of hiring between 2,000 and 3,000 employees by the end of 2017.”

The plant in the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center east of Reno in nearby Storey County also will produce stationary energy storage units for use in homes and businesses.

Tesla on Monday was awarded $8 million in transferable tax credits for meeting investment and hiring benchmarks.

Legislation entitles Tesla to receive $195 million in transferable tax credits that it can sell to other businesses as it meets specified performance levels. This past summer it sold tax credits valued at $20 million to Las Vegas-based MGM Resorts International.

Contact Sandra Chereb at schereb@reviewjournal.com or 775-461-3821. Follow @SandraChereb on Twitter.