Background Republic Steel and Donner Hanna Coke operated a
steel mill along the
Buffalo River on the 88-acre Riverbend,
South Buffalo site
from 1907 to its closing in 1984. As a response to the regional manufacturing downturn related to deindustrialization in the
Rust Belt, the
State of New York created an economic stimulus package, later dubbed the "
Buffalo Billion", providing $1 billion in unearmarked economic investments for the Buffalo area. In 2013, Governor
Andrew Cuomo announced the Buffalo High-Tech Manufacturing Hub at Riverbend, targeting the Republic Steel site, then a
brownfield, for the development of a clean energy business incubation center that was to be funded with $225 million from the Buffalo Billion fund. At the time, the two companies announced as tenants were lighting manufacturer Sorra and solar panel manufacturer
Silevo, which promised 475 jobs. Development of the site would be managed by the Fort Schuyler Management Corp., a nonprofit entity led by officials from the
State University of New York Polytechnic Institute (SUNY Poly) and other state agencies. subsequently scaling up plans for the Buffalo gigafactory. The company outlined a construction timetable and hiring goals promising an eventual 3,000 jobs in Buffalo with 5,000 statewide, and $5 billion in economic activity. The new plans abandoned the research center design in favor of the construction of a 1.2 million square foot factory. As a result, the state increased the incentives offered to $750 million. Because the SolarCity project was to be so big, New York bumped Soraa out of the plant. In 2015, SolarCity's CEO,
Lyndon Rive, stated that the new facility would be key to creating a clean energy-manufacturing market, adding that expansion would not be possible at the Riverbend plant, but more likely in the immediate area. In April 2017, Cuomo secured another $500 million for the Buffalo Billion project, about half of which went into the Tesla facility, bringing New York’s total investment in the factory to $959 million. Tesla and SolarCity employees, along with bankers advising on the deal later said that they were blindsided by the announcement, saying that the product was still in the early design stage.
Operations To build the panels, Tesla outsourced production of the solar cells to
Panasonic. The two companies had worked together to build batteries at Tesla's
Gigafactory Nevada. Panasonic had 30 years of experience producing solar panels. The partnership allowed Tesla to reduce its reliance on debt. Panasonic began solar cell production at the factory in August 2017. At the beginning of production, Panasonic built traditional
solar panels in Buffalo instead of solar shingles. The Japanese company employed about 400 people in Buffalo. with the latter offering
semiconductor and nanotechnology programs specifically for employment at the gigafactory. In January 2018, Tesla announced, after testing on employees' roofs, that it would begin installing its new product on commercial customers' homes "within the next few months". The Tesla Solar Roof proved to be challenging to build. Panasonic had to solve several engineering problems to make the modules work, and when completed, Tesla insisted on additional development to make the modules appear black instead of the blue-green color of the initial units. Panasonic was able to produce thousands of solar panels per day at the factory but sold them to other buyers because Tesla had low demand. Panasonic then shutdown production to focus on further process improvements. Few roofs were installed in 2018. Those that were installed in California were recorded as costing double for the energy produced than the average home solar system. The factory was not able to start commercial production of the shingles until March 2020, and Panasonic left the joint venture in early 2020. Even after the Solar Roof entered production, Tesla struggled to produce the modules in great volume. Three years later, in 2023, industry analyst
Wood Mackenzie reported that only 3,000 Solar Roofs are in use. In Buffalo in 2020, the company started building
Superchargers for its electric vehicles. Tesla also moved more than 600 employees to the building to be entry-level data analysts for its
Autopilot software. Later in the year, Tesla signed a contract with Buffalo committing to operate the factory for an additional five years beyond its current lease, until 2034 (at a rent of $5 million per year, compared with the previous years at $2 million per year), with the option to extend a further ten years, and increasing its job commitment there by 340 positions. == Jobs commitment ==