PONTOON BEACH - Media reports have exploded in the past 24 hours that giant electric-car maker Tesla has plans to open a large, nearly 700,000-plus square-foot warehouse at a location in Pontoon Beach, just south of Interstate 270 at Gateway TradePort.
The location is described as 1202 Tradeport Parkway, which is located off Illinois Route 111 and I-270.
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It has been reported across the media that Tesla plans to lease property presently owned by real estate company CBRE as part of an industrial park in Pontoon Beach. A recent report by the Courier-Tribune says Tesla is making plans to open a very large warehouse in Illinois.
Tesla has announced plans to open a store and a service center close to the warehouse, about 30 miles away. Tesla has a location in Chesterfield, MO. Tesla also has job postings that could be related to the new warehouse.
The electric automaker is hiring a supervisor for a parts facility in St. Louis, MO. A few other job postings also included mentions of a Tesla warehouse in St. Louis.
Tesla CEO and architect of the company Elon Musk has stated this as the goal of his company:
"Our goal when we created Tesla a decade ago was the same as it is today: to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport by bringing compelling mass-market electric cars to market as soon as possible. If we could have done that with our first product, we would have, but that was simply impossible to achieve for a startup company that had never built a car and that had one technology iteration and no economies of scale.
"Our first product was going to be expensive no matter what it looked like, so we decided to build a sports car, as that seemed like it had the best chance of being competitive with its gasoline alternatives. I suspected that this could be misinterpreted as Tesla believing that there was a shortage of sports cars for rich people, so I described the three-step 'master plan' for getting to compelling and affordable electric vehicles in my first blog piece about our company. This was unfortunately almost entirely ignored.
"In order to get to that end goal, big leaps in technology are required, which naturally invites a high level of scrutiny. That is fair, as new technology should be held to a higher standard than what has come before. However, there should also be some reasonable limit to how high such a standard should be, and we believe that this has been vastly exceeded in recent media coverage."
Tesla reported Wednesday that its third-quarter profit more than doubled from a year ago, fueled by higher vehicle sales. The Austin, Texas, electric vehicle and solar panel maker said it earned $3.29 billion from July through September.
Tesla expansion efforts over the years have been a constant, and it appears there is no slowdown for the future. The company has opened two new factories recently and upgraded and expanded other locations.
The impact on Pontoon Beach and the region would be enormous if everything holds true.
These are reported Tesla job listings in Pontoon Beach:
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