A huge battery factory near Reno
Tesla's massive $1.25 billion deal with Nevada to build a huge battery factory near Reno took observers by surprise when it was announced in September.
Tesla had already started construction in Nevada, but on the company's most recent earnings call, CEO Elon Musk was anything but committal about Nevada being the true winner of a multistate competition for the first of what could be several "Gigafactories."
California vaguely re-reentered the runoff in the past few months, and that seemed to enough incentive for the Nevada state government to come up with enough ... incentives! and definitively end the discussion. Besides, it was unclear whether California was really interested in giving Musk and Co. a sweet deal anyway, given that the state legislature ended its session without voting to authorize any sort of competing incentive package.
In any case, Nevada coughed up the money, and now the deal — which would have Tesla and partner Panasonic effectively paying no state taxes for a decade — is done.