Elon Musk On Tesla's Gigafactory: We Didn't Manipulate Nevada Into Anything

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has responded to critics of his plans to build a battery "gigafactory" in Nevada.

Musk defended his company's plans in a blog post entitled "The House Always Wins," a reference to casino gambling.

"There have been several articles recently implying that Tesla, through clever machinations, maneuvered Nevada into providing an overly large incentive package for the Gigafactory," said Musk. "I love backhanded compliments as much as the next person, but this is untrue."

Musk was presumably referring to an investigative report in Fortune that detailed how several states competed to build the factory by offering various incentives.

Musk noted that the state incentives for Tesla's factory were approved unanimously by Nevada's legislature.

"The deal is not merely slightly good for the people of Nevada, it is extremely good," said Musk.

The Tesla CEO denied receiving any cash from the state, but did acknowledge that his company had recieved a parcel of land from the deal.

"If you have been to Nevada, you will notice that there is quite a lot of extra land with nobody on it," he said. "This is not in short supply."

Musk said Nevada's contributions would only cover a small portion of the Gigafactory's cost.

"Of the $5 billion investment needed to bring the Gigafactory to full production in five years, state incentives will cover about 5%," he said.

That would value Nevada's contribution at about $250 million. The Fortune article said the "tally" for Nevada was $1.4 billion.

Musk also revealed that Nevada didn't write Tesla a blank check, so to speak.

"All of the incentives approved by the legislature are performance based," he said. "We must execute according to plan to receive them, meaning that, while the state and Tesla both share the upside, only Tesla suffers the downside."