Tesla Inc. will move its headquarters to Austin, Texas, following through on a threat Elon Musk made last year while tensions among the billionaire and California boiled over months into the pandemic.
The CEO introduced the plan Thursday at some point of Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting on the business enterprise’s new manufacturing facility in Austin. The dearth of cheap housing and long commute times are amongst elements prescribing how a good deal the business enterprise can increase in the San Francisco Bay area it’s known as home for 18 years.
Musk didn’t carry up his conflict with nearby health officers who briefly blocked his efforts to reopen Tesla’s manufacturing facility in the metropolis of Fremont last year. The CEO reacted angrily to the county’s resistance in May 2020, saying the business enterprise could move its headquarters and destiny packages to Texas and Nevada. Tesla sued the county, defied its shutdown order, and restarted manufacturing.
Musk had hinted for months that a move to Texas will be imminent. He additionally commenced dwelling in the state — the country’s 2nd biggest and 2nd most populous wherein Tesla has ramped up a manufacturing facility in Austin and wherein a number of the operations for his aerospace firm, SpaceX, are based totally. Musk lashed out last year at California’s restrictive shelter-in-area measures at some point of the coronavirus pandemic and their impact on the business enterprise’s capacity to function at its biggest manufacturing facility in Fremont, California.
A move of the company headquarters indicates a primary shift for Tesla, which strains its roots to Silicon Valley and has drawn from a lush surrounding of incentives for electric-automobile shoppers and green-power projects to propel its growth. The business enterprise’s proximity to Stanford University has furnished a wealthy panorama of engineers from which to choose — and its Silicon Valley area positioned it in the radius of several generation agencies, which include Google, Apple, and Facebook.
The Fremont manufacturing facility will live up and running. Musk mentioned affordability and accessibility trouble for a few Tesla’s personnel in California, acknowledging why he selected to position the Austin gigafactory in the area that it’s miles in.
Laura Huffman with the Austin Chamber of Commerce believes the move to Austin simply solidifies the metropolis’s image. It simply cements our recognition globally as a metropolis wherein innovation is a hub. Tesla has established itself to be such a critical business enterprise in Austin, partially due to the fact it’s miles providing 10,000 jobs right here.
Between his time at SpaceX in South Texas or staying with a chum right here in Austin, Musk felt the wintry weather hurricane just like the relaxation of us. Musk says the brand new manufacturing facility might be making automobiles as quickly because it opens, however it may not be in complete-scale manufacturing till overdue subsequent year.
In the very last slide of the presentation, Musk additionally unveiled a brand new emblem for Tesla, an oval harking back to rodeo belt buckles proposing the Tesla “T” on a celebrity with the words “Don’t Mess With,” implying a play at the well-known “Don’t Mess with Texas.”
This state-of-the-art move follows Musk’s very own flight from California to Austin in December 2020 and his preceding threats to transport the business enterprise’s operations out of California in May 2020, because of COVID-19 shelter-in-area policies that compelled its Fremont plant to close down.
This announcement comes because the business enterprise plans to open one in all its most up-to-date factories in Austin. The manufacturing facility is 5 mins from the airport, 15 min from downtown and they are going to create an ecological paradise. Several California-primarily based agencies have left for the Lone Star State, which decreases taxes, the inexpensive value of the dwelling and fewer commercial enterprise regulations. Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. recently moved to Houston from Palo Alto, at the same time as Charles Schwab Corp. relocated its headquarters to the Dallas vicinity from San Francisco.
Tesla isn’t the simplest California tech business enterprise shifting its headquarters to Austin. Oracle Corporation, a multi-billion greenback software program and generation business enterprise, introduced in December 2020 it changed into leaving Silicon Valley for Austin.