The electric car manufacturer is booming financially, its current stock value 206 times where it began in 2010, and Musk’s empire has already eyed Texas for various projects.
Musk announced in May 2020 that the company would seek to move its headquarters from Fremont, California. Since then, Tesla announced a cybertruck manufacturing plant in eastern Travis County.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was local closure orders that prevented the company’s Alameda County location from reopening early on during the pandemic.
At the time, he said, “Tesla will now move its HQ and future programs to Texas/Nevada immediately. If we even retain Fremont manufacturing activity at all, it will be [dependent] on how Tesla is treated in the future. Tesla is the last carmaker left in California.”
But at the meeting Thursday, Musk said it would not be closing all of its operations in California. “Let me be clear, this is not a matter of Tesla leaving California. Our intention is to increase output in Fremont and Giga Nevada by 50 percent — but we’re just hitting the sides of the bowl,” he said.
Musk said that operations at the Fremont facility are “jammed” and lacking space for expansion.
He also added, “It’s tough for people to afford houses and many have to come in from far away.”
The high cost of living in California has driven many people out of California, seeking refuge from the rising housing prices and burdensome tax policies.
Austin is itself facing a drastic rise in cost of living, due in large part to the desirability of it for companies and individuals looking to relocate. With the headquarters relocation on top of the already planned plant, even more Tesla employees will be relocating to the area
“We’re going to make an ecological paradise,” Musk stated, citing the manufacturing plant’s location five minutes from the airport and the nearby Colorado River.
It won’t be the first Musk operation in Texas. One of his offshoots, SpaceX, has operated in Brownsville for a couple of years and another subsidiary, Gambit Energy Storage, is building 100 megawatt batteries by Houston designed to buttress the state’s power grid.
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Brad Johnson
Brad Johnson is a senior reporter for The Texan and an Ohio native who graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 2017. He is an avid sports fan who most enjoys watching his favorite teams continue their title drought throughout his cognizant lifetime. In his free time, you may find Brad quoting Monty Python productions and trying to calculate the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow.