he’s full of shit. He’ll tell you whatever
you want to hear.”
In public, Musk doesn’t talk much
about Tesla’s factory in Buffalo—a place
he once, in better times, dubbed Gigafac-
tory 2. Gigafactory 1, of course, is Tesla’s
much-hyped futuristic electric car plant
outside Reno. Gigafactory 2, which is
shrouded in silence and secrets, was a
controversial side venture: a high-stakes
move to dominate America’s growing
market for solar energy. Tesla bought
the factory’s main tenant, SolarCity,
for almost $5 billion in 2016. The plan,
in true Muskian hyperbole, was to turn
the plant in Buffalo into what was billed
as the largest manufacturing facility of
its kind in the Western Hemisphere.
SolarCity would build 10,000 solar pan-
els per day and install them on homes
and businesses across the country. In the
process, it would create 5,000 jobs in an
area that very much needed them. “This
is one of the poorest cities in the country,”
Scott says. “You get a big company here,
and it’s a big deal.”
From the outside, the sheer scale of
the Buffalo plant sparkles with promise.
At 1.2 million square feet, it stands at
the point where the Buffalo River bends
through the city. The building is gleam-
ing white, as if to signify its freshness
amid a landscape of abandoned grain
elevators and sprawling, desolate steel
mills. The area around the factory is
hardscrabble working class; until Solar-
City was built, people only drove through
it when the fierce wind off Lake Erie shut
down the highway that residents take
from the southern suburbs to down-
town. Now three flags fly in front of the
factory: those of the United States, New
York State, and Tesla.
But three years after Tesla bought
SolarCity, there are serious doubts as
to whether the plant will ever fulfill its
promises. The website CleanTechnica,
which is mostly supportive of Musk, calls
SolarCity “a disaster waiting to happen.”
A potentially costly lawsuit alleges that
Tesla acquired SolarCity at the expense
of its own shareholders. And former
employees want to know what happened
to the massive subsidy Tesla received.
“New York State taxpayers deserved
more from a $750 million investment,”
a laid-off employee named Dale Wither-
ell wrote to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.
“Tesla has done a tremendous job pro-
viding smoke and mirrors and empty
promises to the area.”
The controversy over SolarCity,
which has dovetailed with questions
about Musk’s mountain of debt andprofit shortfalls, offers a window into the
mind-set of America’s most outlandish
and unpredictable CEO. Musk’s believ-
ers argue that the details of his ventures
don’t matter: It’s the grand vision that
counts. “The guy has a will to make stuff
happen that is extraordinary,” says some-
one who worked closely with Musk. “He
willed Tesla to happen. And in willing a
reality into existence, he might not stick
to the facts.” But in the case of SolarCity,
Musk’s penchant for making promises he
can’t deliver on turned out to matter a
great deal—and could even pose a threat
to his entire empire.W
hen Witherell got his job at
the SolarCity plant last year, he
was thrilled. He’d moved back
to Buffalo, where his parents live, after a
stint in Texas and a tough divorce. He has
a disabled daughter, but even so, the job
wasn’t so much about the paycheck. “At
some point push is going to come to
shove in our world, and fossil fuel use is
going to catch up with us,” he says. “I
believed in the product.”
The plant, in fact, was a centerpiece of
Governor Andrew Cuomo’s grand plan
to revitalize upstate New York. Buffalo’s
landscape offers a daily reminder of its
past glory and present despair. The grainPAGES 106–7:PHOTOGRAPHS BY ART STREIBER/CONDÉ NAST ARCHIVE (MUSK,RIGHT); BY BRIAN DOWLING(MUSK, LEFT), ANDREW HARRER/BLOOMBERG (FACTORY EXTERIOR), MICHAELNAGLE/BLOOMBERG (SOLAR PANELS),ALL FROM GETTY IMAGES; BY TESLA (FACTORY INTERIORS). PAGE 108:
PHOTOGRAPH BY TESLA