5 reasons why Elon Musk should rescue a GM factory in Ohio

GM

A vehicle being assembled at GM's Lordstown factory in Ohio.

• GM is likely to close a factory in Ohio next.
• Tesla has already taken over one shuttered GM plant in California.
• Tesla CEO Elon Musk could revisit that playbook, saving millions if not billions and cutting a deal with President Trump.

Last week, General Motors ripped a Band-Aid off one of its biggest problems: it has too many factories in the US and Canada building unpopular passenger cars when consumers want SUVs - so the automaking giant announced that it would idle four plants in the Ohio and Michigan and one north of the border.

The fate of these factories is up in the air. GM has, in its corporate parlance, "deallocated" them. It can't say whether it will close them for good because it has to negotiate moves that big with the United Auto Workers as part of a new contract, set to be voted on next year.

The situation has drawn the ire of President Trump, who told residents of Ohio that the Lordstown factory - set to be idled next March as production of the Chevy Cruze sedan winds down - that manufacturing jobs would remain in the state. Ohio, of course, was a critical swing state in the 2016 election and will be again in 2020. So Trump took some shots at GM, and GM made a peace offering by the end of last week.

But the writing is on the wall, and it doesn't read well for Lordstown, which has been a challenge for GM, given that the plant has been running just a single shift. Roughly 1,600 workers could be laid off, and although GM has said that they could be offered the option to relocate to other factories - and the UAW has said it will fight a closing - they might want some other options.

Enter Tesla and CEO Elon Musk. Sure, the carmaker has endured an insane 2018. But it does appear to have gotten its troubled Model 3 sedan on track and could easily close out the year having delivered 200,000-300,000 vehicles, more than double its 2017 total.

Tesla has a single factory, located in Fremont, CA. It's off the grid of the automaking heartland in the US Midwest, and far from "Detroit South," the southern states where numerous foreign "transplant" carmakers have been doing business for decades.

That factory is pretty well maxed out, at this juncture. Tesla has another plant in Nevada, where it makes battery packs. But it's even farther off the auto-supply-chain grid. The company has plans to build another factory, in China, but that will takes years.

Meanwhile, some idle manufacturing capacity could be opening up in Ohio. Musk might want to take a look at it. here's why:

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