Tesla
Even though its corporate headquarters have been relocated to Texas, Tesla now considers California to be its global engineering home base. Elon Musk stated that a Palo Alto engineering hub will be “effectively a Tesla headquarters.” The CEO also stated that the company’s Fremont plant, which it purchased in 2010 from a joint venture of General Motors and Toyota Motor Corp., will produce over 600,000 vehicles this year.
Tesla will establish its new engineering headquarters in Palo Alto, California, in a former Hewlett-Packard building. According to Musk, the transition from the company that founded Silicon Valley to Tesla is poetic.
The move represents a 180-degree turn from the CEO’s previous remarks about the state. Musk wasn’t shy about criticizing California’s regulations and taxes when he relocated Tesla’s official corporate headquarters to Texas in 2021, citing “overregulation, overlitigation, and over-taxation.” “Frankly, this is the final straw,” he tweeted about pandemic lockdowns in California the previous year. Tesla will immediately relocate its headquarters and future programs to Texas/Nevada. If we keep manufacturing in Fremont at all, it will be [dependent] on how Tesla is treated in the future. Tesla is the last car manufacturer in California.”
Tesla will shift its battery production focus from Germany to the United States following the announcement of the Inflation Reduction Act incentives. Musk attended an event on Wednesday with California Governor Gavin Newsom, who mocked the move, saying, “Eat your heart out, Germany.” California, which has the most electric vehicles, gave Tesla tax breaks on its way to becoming the EV superpower it is today; Texas, by contrast, has minimal regulations and taxes.