MEXICO CITY — A little more than two years ago, Elon Musk and other Tesla Inc. executives met with a Mexican auto-parts supplier to discuss an opportunity some companies would kill for.
For some time, Tesla had been evaluating Nemak SAB and, in the first half of 2016, the carmaker talked with the company possibly becoming a direct supplier of aluminum housing components for its Model 3 electric sedans. But Tesla’s projections, its prices and the pressure Musk had put on himself and his company to produce as many as 500,000 vehicles by 2018 was too much for the northern Mexico-based unit of the conglomerate Alfa SAB.
