Tesla puts Mexico in the epicentre

All that remains is for Elon Musk to follow through and not back out, as happened with his first attempt to buy Twitter, which generated a wave of speculation about the company with the little bird. In the end he did acquire it - as we all know - but there were months of doubts. 

The South African tycoon is temperamental, fickle and fussy. How he can burn money on his aerospace experiments can also hurt his pocket.  

Musk's recent announcement that his electric and autonomous car manufacturing company will have a production plant in Mexico seems to me to be very positive news; moreover, it proves Musk's vision, because this 51-year-old entrepreneur is above all a visionary and he does not miss any opportunity to capitalise on his nose.

Of course Mexico has many comparative and competitive advantages, for a start it is part of a trilateral agreement with the United States and Canada; and it has many synergies with the rest of Central and South America.  

Tesla already has two factories outside the US: one in Germany and one in China. Both are strategic because of their geographical position and economic potential. 

Germany is the bridge to all of Europe and also to part of Asia. And China is the giant that will continue to expand its wealth among the new Chinese millionaires and is, of course, a strategic market that cannot be ignored. Musk only needs to set foot in Qatar or Saudi Arabia and, of course, India. 

For Mexico, this is good news in many respects. Firstly, because of the investment, which will initially exceed 1 billion dollars; secondly, because of the number of skilled jobs it will generate and the economic spillover that it will trigger in the region because it will not only benefit Monterrey; and thirdly, because despite all the bad things happening in Mexico, in terms of insecurity, kidnappings and the controversies surrounding the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, despite everything Mexico continues to be an important economy for the United States. 

The automotive industry is one of the backbones of wealth generation in Mexico; another pillar is the construction industry, not to be left out. 

If there is investment, wealth is generated, jobs are detonated and in these industries the sub-sectors also benefit greatly because several production chains are required.

A few days ago, BMW also announced that it would invest in a factory in Mexico. Electric cars are already being produced, as is the case with Ford's SUVs, and General Motors also wants to produce only electric cars at its plant in Ramos Arizpe, starting next year.  

The automotive market is definitely electric and production is aiming for mass production. We are in that phase that combustion cars went through when Henry Ford started producing them and they were very expensive and a luxury only within the reach of a few wealthy people. 

Massification was slow in coming and experienced a "boom" from the 1950s onwards, and the expansion was definitive when car prices, incomes, credit and the widening of the middle class became inevitable from 1970 onwards.

Petrol cars were mass-produced for that middle class from the Volkswagen, to the Seat 600 and the Renault 4L, and now we see the same process. The prices of electric cars are very expensive, but surely in thirty or fifty years' time they will be affordable and there will be a car within the reach of the middle class.

The path is very clear and will be marked by zero CO2 emissions. Just a few days ago MEPs in Strasbourg approved a zero emissions plan for new cars and vans by 2035.

This means that Parliament will ban polluting vehicles in the European Union (EU) from 2035; the Commission will present, by 2025 at the latest, a methodology for assessing and reporting data on CO2 emissions over the entire life cycle of cars and vans sold in the EU.