San Antonio says its Tesla bid surpassed Nevada’s

Associated Press

Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2014 | 10:49 p.m.

SAN ANTONIO — San Antonio's economic development czar says the Alamo City's bid for Tesla's proposed $5 billion battery factory was superior to the state of Nevada's, and that was even without any additional incentives from the state of Texas.

Mario Hernandez, who heads the San Antonio Economic Development Foundation, made the assertion in a memo to the foundation board. The memo was obtained by the San Antonio Express-News. Hernandez offered no details on the San Antonio proposal in the memo or in an interview with the Express-News.

"Suffice it to say that our package was more weighted to early offsetting costs for the company," he told the newspaper.

Tesla chose Nevada as the site for the plant after the state promised nearly $1.3 billion in tax breaks.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry's aides say he still considers the Tesla race an open competition until Nevada's Legislature makes good on the state's incentive promises. His spokeswoman Lucy Nashed said in a statement Tuesday that Texas economic development officials consider the proposed battery factory to be an "ongoing project" that the state might still discuss with Tesla.

She said the incentive package that Nevada promised Tesla still needs approval by the Nevada Legislature.

Perry has declined requests from The Associated Press to detail incentives offered Tesla. However, whatever incentives offered from Perry's Texas Enterprise Fund would not support any single Texas city bidding for the project. Hutto and Dallas also were seen as potential sites for the lithium-ion battery plant.

However, the San Antonio bid included no state incentives, Hernandez said.

"Our package didn't have any state incentives. It was San Antonio versus Nevada, the entire state," he told the newspaper.

In his memo, Hernandez wrote that Tesla suggested late in the bidding that local officials consider starting construction on a speculative basis at the developers' own cost before the project was even awarded.