The IT Nerd

Earlier this week, shockwaves were sent through Canada and the United States by General Motors who announced that as part of a shift to electric cars and autonomous vehicles they were closing a number of plants in Canada and the US. Included on this list is an assembly plant in Oshawa Ontario which is east of Toronto. Now cars have been built in this community for about a century. Thus this announcement has not only sent shockwaves through this community, but the entire country as well. Now there’s talk from politicians and the union that represents workers at this plant that they’re going to fight GM on this and force them to continue production at that plant. But I think that this ship has sailed and they need to reach out to someone else who can help them.

That person’s name is Elon Musk.

The reason why I say Elon Musk should get involved is simple. He’s done something like this before. The Tesla facility in Fremont California builds every Model S, X, and Model 3 at present. But Musk got his hands on it when he bought it from GM who along with Toyota were using it to build the Pontiac Vibe most recently. But shut it down and threw thousands out of work. Musk bought the plant and put a lot of those people back to work as they were basically a ready made workforce having built cars for GM and Toyota.

At present, the Fremont facility is cranking out as many cars as it can. But it is clear that Musk and Tesla need more manufacturing capacity. Thus Oshawa would be ideal. Not only does it give him a facility with a ready to go workforce that is highly skilled that he can leverage, he also has a supply chain that has built up around the plant over the century that cars have been built in Oshawa. On top of that, Canada has proven to be one of Tesla’s more successful markets and it could use the positive press of having a plant in Canada to accelerate that. Not to mention that there are key advantages that Canada has [Warning: PDF] when it comes to the automotive industry. Finally, I am sure that both the Ontario Government and the Canadian Government would trip over themselves to help Musk to set up shop here. Thus making his initial outlay a whole lot more affordable to him.

Potential risks? We’ll I’ll admit that there’s only one. His name is Donald Trump. He’s leveled threats about imposing tariffs on Canadian made cars in the past. And were this to happen, it would be ugly. Now Elon Musk is no fan of Donald Trump so he may not care. And given Tesla’s success in places like Europe, he may ship cars made in Canada elsewhere to avoid this. But every other company who makes cars in Canada certainly will care and let Musk know about it. But this shouldn’t stop Musk from making a play to by the soon to be closed GM plant in Oshawa. It’s a win for him, and for Canada.

So how about it Mr. Musk?

This entry was posted on November 28, 2018 at 9:48 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Tesla. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.