NLV hopeful that electric car factory would breathe life into Apex

By Kyle Roerink

Friday, July 17, 2015 | 2 a.m.

North Las Vegas wanted a Tesla — but it might be getting a Faraday instead.

The town, beset by financial woes from the great recession, is looking to spark a manufacturing boom by imitating the economic development playbook drawn by the Legislature and the Governor’s Office of Economic Development that brought Tesla’s Gigafactory to Northern Nevada. That’s a bet that may be paying off.

On Thursday, news broke that North Las Vegas is one of four finalists being considered for the location of an electric car factory for Faraday Future, a startup looking to take on Tesla that just left stealth mode.

If selected, the factory would be housed in the currently empty 18,000-acre Apex Industrial Park as an anchor tenant. The city hopes the facility would transform Apex into a magnet for business and manufacturers in the southwest of the state.

"We are thrilled to be a finalist for this huge job creator in Southern Nevada. This opportunity ... demonstrates our mayor and council’s vision for Apex to become the incubator for future businesses in our region," said Gina Gavin, North Las Vegas director of economic and business development.

But it’s a long way between here and there.

To win Tesla’s factory, state lawmakers agreed to grant $1.25 billion in tax breaks to any company that spends more than $3.5 billion over 10 years in Nevada, a lure that North Las Vegas hopes to replicate with Faraday Future. But, the tax abatements require approval from the Governor’s Office of Economic Development and it’s uncertain whether lawmakers will need to draft or amend laws to win Faraday’s business.

State and city officials are tight-lipped as negotiations continue.

“We’ve been talking with (Faraday) for a number of months,” Steve Hill, director of the Governor’s Office of Economic Development, said. “I was certainly pleased to see their announcement that we are one of the states they are continuing to consider.”

The company is estimating that a factory would create more than 4,000 jobs while continuing Nevada’s transformation from a state reliant on gaming to a marketplace where electric cars, batteries and drones power the state’s economy.

Little is publicly known about Faraday, a startup based Gardena, Calif., that currently employees 200 people. According to Motor Trend, the company has promised that its first car will be in garages by 2017, but it has not released detailed designs, a name for the car, or the identity of its CEO.

However, the company has identified several key members of its team, which include designers who have worked at automobile companies like Tesla, BMW and Chevrolet. As The Verge pointed out on Wednesday, "Independent EV builders have come and gone over the past decade — the auto industry is extraordinarily difficult to break into, and even Tesla is hanging on for dear life — but Faraday is at least legitimate enough to have poached from a who's-who of competitors.”