Tesla is moving its headquarters to Austin, Texas. The move was announced by Musk during the annual shareholder meeting on Thursday.
Tesla’s move follows a wave of tech companies that are moving their headquarters out of California. Oracle and Hewlett Packard moved their headquarters last year. Fintech company PayCertify also announced plans to move from San Jose to Reno, Nevada. Some observers have blamed high taxes and state policies that are unfriendly toward businesses.
Musk himself hinted that Austin could become “America’s next boom town” due to Texas’ more business-friendly environment, though he was quick to shoot down a suggestion that he liked Texas’ social policies in the wake of the state’s controversial abortion ban. He also previously called for the development of more housing in the Austin area in response to soaring property values as more people move to the city.
Elon Musk was one of the few to hint that California’s response to COVID-19 was a factor in so many tech companies leaving the state. In last year’s fight with California over its response to COVID-19, which forced Tesla to temporarily close its factory in Fremont, Musk did threaten to pull Tesla’s headquarters out of the state. He referred to California’s stay-at-home order an “unconstitutional” form of mass house arrest, hinting that state- and county-level officials had become too authoritarian.
During the annual meeting, Musk denied that the move of Tesla’s headquarters was sparked by past disputes with the state of California, which caused him to move out of the state and sell his homes. Rather, the goal is to, as he said, “increase output” in the wake of a streak of company record-setting quarters for electric vehicle deliveries. Most recently, Tesla delivered 241,300 vehicles in Q3 2021.
Tesla is currently in the process of constructing a Gigafactory in Travis County, where Austin is located. The Gigafactory could start manufacturing the highly anticipated Cybertruck, along with the Model Y, once it is complete.
It did plan to manufacture Tesla Semis at Gigafactory Austin, but it is not confirmed whether it will move forward with those plans at least until issues with the supply chain is resolved. There are some signs that it is developing the capacity to manufacture the Tesla Semi in Nevada. However, Musk recently announced that the Tesla Semi will be delayed until 2022 to allow more time to resolve the supply chain problems.
Elon Musk’s other companies are ramping up activity in the Austin area across the board. SpaceX is also constructing a facility that could produce the next-generation Starlink satellites that the company recently filed for regulatory approval for. The Boring Company has previously expressed interest in constructing a tunnel that will make commuting between downtown Austin and Tesla’s Gigafactory easier for the thousands of employees that Tesla plans to hire for the factory.
With all this activity, you can be sure that Elon Musk’s companies are on a hiring spree in the Austin area. Tesla anticipates hiring as many as 10,000 people at Gigafactory Austin alone. Job opportunities can be found on SpaceX’s career page, Tesla’s career page, and the Boring Company’s career page.
Comments