After months of rumours, Tesla is set to confirm the details of its new Langford service centre Thursday morning, Mayor Stew Young told Black Press Media.
The multi-billion-dollar electric vehicle company will soon be occupying a new site between Langford’s Costco and Home Depot, servicing Tesla owners on Vancouver Island for the first time.
“We’ve been working on this for a year and we’re pretty excited,” Young said.
Numbers from the province show there were 10,376 zero-emission vehicles on Vancouver Island in 2020, although it doesn’t list the number of Teslas specifically.
Young said the estimated $40- to $50-million service centre building will immediately generate construction jobs and, once up and running, will create a number of technician positions as well. Young estimated Tesla will hire and train 50 technicians for the new site.
He said Tesla will be providing a timeline at the groundbreaking Thursday, but that in Langford a commercial business usually takes a year to be built after shovels hit the ground.
The site, 2371 Gate City Blvd., was in particular approved for automobile rental and sale.
Rumours of a temporary site in Victoria, while the Langford site is built, are also expected to be answered Thursday.