Musk, the company’s chief executive, announced the plan at its annual shareholder meeting on Thursday. Tesla will move its headquarters from California to Austin, Texas, where it is currently establishing a new factory.
When Mr. Musk became dissatisfied with local coronavirus lockdown orders that caused Tesla to halt production at its Fremont, California plant more than a year ago, he threatened to take action. The threat was fulfilled this week. As of Thursday, Mr. Musk said that the firm intends to retain the plant and increase manufacturing there.
As a result of the high cost of living in the Bay Area, some workers must travel great distances to work, he said. According to him, the Texas plant, which is located near Austin and will build Tesla’s Cybertruck, is only minutes from from downtown and an airport.
In March 2020, Mr. Musk predicted that there would be virtually no new instances of viral infections by the end of April, calling pandemic limitations “fascist.” Mr. Musk was an ardent early opponent of pandemic limits, calling them “fascist.” In December, he said that he had relocated to Texas in order to be closer to the new plant. His second firm, SpaceX, is based in California and launches rockets from there.
The business is on pace to sell about one million automobiles this year and has announced plans for a significant expansion. Along with the Austin plant, Tesla is now constructing a facility near Berlin. It has had a presence in Palo Alto for more than a decade at its current location. Stanford is located across the water from Fremont and is the home of Stanford University.
Tesla is one of a number of California businesses that have announced plans to relocate to Texas in recent months. Hp Enterprise said in December that it was relocating to the Houston region, while Charles Schwab has relocated to a suburb of the Dallas-Fort worth area.
With Mr. Musk’s decision, a never-ending argument between politicians and business leaders in Texas and California over which state is a better location to conduct business will undoubtedly be fueled even more. Texan Gov. Greg Abbott and his predecessors have wooed California businesses into relocating there, claiming that the state offers lower taxes, cheaper housing prices, and other advantages over the Golden State. California has long emphasized the technical superiority of Silicon Valley and its institutions as the reason why many entrepreneurs choose to establish and grow their businesses in the state, a list that includes Tesla, Facebook, Google, and Apple, among other firms.
Texas has also grown increasingly appealing to employees in recent years, owing to a typically cheaper cost of living in the state. Austin, a flourishing liberal metropolis that serves as the seat of the University of Texas, has exploded in recent years. Many technological firms, some of which are headquartered in California, have established massive campuses throughout the state. Although housing prices and traffic congestion have substantially risen as a consequence, the city is now experiencing issues similar to those that Californian municipalities have been struggling with for years.
