How A Brothel Owner Helped Nevada Win Tesla's Gigafactory

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This is The Morning Shift, our one-stop daily roundup of all the auto news that's actually important — all in one place every weekday morning. Or, you could spend all day waiting for other sites to parse it out to you one story at a time. Isn't your time more important?

1st Gear: Appropriate, Especially If Taxpayers Are Getting Screwed

Nevadans are going to hear a lot from groups on the left and the right about the money that state is throwing to get the Nevada gigafactory, but will they care that Lance Gilman helped bring it there?

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Here's a great bit from The Reno-Gazette Journal:

To some, he is a major player when it comes to economic development in Nevada, a state that is still clawing its way out of a recession. To others, Gilman is also seen as a flesh peddler — he’s owner of the famous Mustang Ranch brothel, legally operated in Storey County just east of Reno.

Gilman is the principal and director of the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center, billed as the largest industrial park in the world. As Storey County Manager Pat Whitten put it, Gilman is “the lead economic engine for Northern Nevada.”

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Pretty sure this is a sub-plot on Big Love they never got around to.

2nd Gear: Hybrid Sales Down, Electric Car Sales Up!

Do people want hybrids? Fewer and fewer as a % over the overall market, with an overall drop of market share down to 3.6% from 3.7% last year according to Edmunds.

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Per the WSJ:

"As the summer months wind down, we're approaching the time of the year when sales of these vehicles tend to be slower, so a late-year surge isn't very likely," said Jessica Caldwell, an Edmunds.com analyst.

For many major car makers, sales volumes are declining as gas prices stabilize and more U.S. buyers return to buying large cars and sport-utility vehicles.

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Yep. Although it's worth noting that the Nissan Leaf is up 34% and the Tesla Model S is up 47%.

3rd Gear: Ford Recalls 191,770 Chinese Foci

Ford is like a real car company in China and being a real car company means recalls!

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From Bloomberg:

Changan Ford, the Dearborn-based company’s joint venture in China, will call back 191,770 Focus sedans that were built as far back as 2009, China’s General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, or AQSIQ, said in a statement on its website. Ford will replace the necessary parts to eliminate safety hazards, according to the statement.

The automaker issued the recall after the regulator looked into consumer complaints and concluded that refueling hoses could crack and cause fuel leakage in extreme cases, and lead to fires. AQSIQ may order the manufacturer to widen the recall if it finds more vehicles with similar problems, according to the statement.

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4th Gear: Nissan Recalling Nearly 200K Cars

Speaking of recalls, Nissan has about 200k coming globally,

According to Reuters, Nissan has to replace the starter motor in 55,000 cars and the rear drum brakes in about 126,000 MIcra, Sunny and other vehicles.

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5th Gear: August Jobs Report Bad For Just About Everyone

While the economy added jobs and the unemployment rate fell to 6.1% last month, most people were hoping for a much better performance with the economy adding 142,000 jobs as opposed to the Wall Street estimate of 230,000 jobs.

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The good news is wages grew 2.1% year-over-year and auto manufacturing continued to add jobs at a healthy rate. On average, monthly job growth in the U.S. is still stronger than it's been since the recession.

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Reverse: Slow History Day?

On September 5, 1957, New York Times writer Gilbert Millstein gives a rave review to "On the Road," the second novel (hardly anyone had read the first) by a 35-year-old Columbia dropout named Jack Kerouac. "Jack went to bed obscure," Kerouac's girlfriend told a reporter, "and woke up famous."

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[HISTORY]

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Neutral: Is The Tesla Deal Worth What Nevada Is Paying? Would you have bid if you were running a state?

Photo Credit: Getty Images