Tesla will move its headquarters from California to Austin, Texas, where it is building a new factory, its chief executive Elon Musk said Thursday at the company’s annual shareholder meeting.
The move builds on a threat that Mr Musk issued more than a year ago when he was frustrated by local coronavirus lockdown orders that forced Tesla to halt production at its factory in Fremont, Calif. Mr Musk said on Thursday that the company would keep that factory. And expand production there.
“There’s a limit to how much you can scale in the Bay Area,” he said, noting that higher housing prices translate into longer commutes for some employees. Texas factory, which is near Austin and Will build Tesla’s Cybertruck, downtown and a few minutes from the airport, Mr Musk said.
Mr Musk was an outspoken early critic of pandemic restrictions, calling them “fascist” and predicting in March 2020 that there would be almost no new cases of virus infection by the end of April. In December, He said he had already taken himself to Texas Near the new factory. His other company SpaceX also launched rockets from the state.