Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Thursday that the company is moving its headquarters from Silicon Valley to Austin, Texas, where it has been building a new factory for a little more than a year.
Musk said Tesla will continue to operate its electric vehicle factory in Fremont, CA, and that he even plans to try and increase production there by 50 percent. “Just to be clear, though, we will be continuing to expand our activities in California,” he said during the company’s annual shareholder meeting. “So this is not a matter of Tesla leaving California.”
Musk had previously threatened to pull Tesla’s entire operations out of California because he disagreed with the shelter-in-place orders the state leaned on early in the coronavirus pandemic. Tesla even sued the county that the company’s California factory is in. Musk moved to Texas last year, as SpaceX increased its presence there. The Tesla CEO said at one point that he thought California had become too “complacent” with respect to its residents and businesses.
Tesla started building its next US Gigafactory outside Austin in 2020 and has made an incredible amount of progress in the intervening year. “We’re going to create an ecological paradise here.. on the Colorado River,” a reference to how the company plans to open up parts of the land to the public.
Musk previously said that Tesla chose to build in Austin over other locations because employees were more willing to move there.
“It’s tough for people to afford houses [in California],” Musk said Thursday. Tesla’s Austin location is also right near the local airport, which Musk said is convenient.
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