Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the company would be moving its headquarters from Palo Alto, California to Austin, Texas, a city that has recently seen a flood of tech companies and remote workers. Musk announced the news at the 2021 Tesla, Inc. Annual Meeting of Stockholders, which took place at the Tesla Austin gigafactory, rather than in the Bay Area as it did in previous years.
Musk also said Tesla would be continuing to expand activities in California, increasing its output at its Fremont gigafactory by 50%, although he didn’t elaborate on how he would achieve such a ramp up in production. The factory is currently able to produce about 500,000 Model 3 and Model Ys per year and another 100,000 Model S and Model X per year.
Last May, Tesla filed a lawsuit against Alameda County over the shuttering of the company’s manufacturing facility in Fremont, California to stop the spread of COVID and restrict any businesses not deemed essential and threatened to take his business outside the state. The automaker dropped the lawsuit just a couple weeks later, but Musk was certainly fired up, tweeting: “Frankly, this is the final straw. 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 CA.”
The drama with Alameda County wasn’t mentioned at the Shareholder event. Rather, Musk attributed the move to Texas in part due to a more accessible location for workers.
“It’s tough for people to afford houses and people have to come in from far away,” said Musk. “There’s a limit to how big you can scale it in the Bay Area, so we’re here in Western era factories like five minutes from the airport, 15 minutes from Downtown.”
Musk said Tesla plans to build “an ecological paradise” at the Austin location near the Colorado River.
During the event, Musk also provided updates on the Cybertruck, which he said would start production at the end of 2022, with “volume production” by 2023. The Tesla Semi and Roadster would follow with the start of production by the end of 2023.
Musk cited multiple supply chain shortages, including the ongoing semiconductor shortage, as a reason for the delay.
“The Semi in particular needs a lot of cells, needs a lot of cells [and] a lot of chips,” he said.
Although Tesla unveiled the Semi prototype in 2017 and the Cybertruck in 2019, both vehicles have faced repeated delays since, and always for supply chain issues.
This is a developing story. Check back in for updates.
source: TechCrunch
