Blog Tesla Will Move HQ Out of California After Fight Against Health Order

Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk said on Twitter Saturday that the company will move its headquarters and “future operations” out of California. Additionally, Tesla plans to file a lawsuit against Alameda County over a health order that shut down the Fremont, Calif. facility.

Tesla planned to return to production on Friday, however Alameda County’s interim public health officer, Dr. Erica Pan said that Tesla must keep the plant closed until the county lifts restrictions in place to slow the spread of COVID-19.

Musk said the suit will be filed “immediately.” He called Pan “ignorant” for keeping the restrictions in place despite California Gov. Gavin Newsom loosening the stay-at-home order.

“This is the final straw,” Musk tweeted. “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 dependen on how Tesla is treated in the future. Tesla is the last carmaker left in CA.”

https://twitter.com/x/status/1259162367285317633

The tweet suggests that Tesla’s next factory is set to be built in Texas. Musk has teased the Lone Star State as the home for the next factory and an announcement was expected soon.

Tesla’s factory in Fremont has 5.3 million square feet of manufacturing and office space on 370 acres of land, with plans to expand to 10 million square feet, according to the company’s website.

There are 10,000 employees at the Fremont factory who build the Tesla Model S, Model X, and Model 3.

 

[Bucfan11]

I call BS. Elon is just bluffing. However, if they do move out of the factory they invested a ton load of money on. The ex Chevrolet / Toyota plant is massive. I just charged there yesterday. Lucid Motors is in the next city over in case you guys don't know the bay area. Newark based Lucid could move into the factory and have everything ready to go for them haha thanks Elon

Read the tweet. He actually said “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 [California].” So as of yesterday he is not planning on shutting down Fremont. He also said they would sue and they have already done that. I would not bet on him bluffing.

 

[linux-works]

here's a short list (out of date already) of bay area 'new generation car companies':

All of the car companies, suppliers, and auto startups in Silicon Valley

(table format but does not show tabs)

Firm Bay area city CA driverless car permit

Apple Cupertino Yes
Auro Robotics Santa Clara
AutoX Palo Alto Yes
Baudi USA Sunnyvale Yes
BMW Group Technology Office Mountain View Yes
Bosch Research and Technology Center North America Palo Alto Yes
Caruma Technologies San Francisco
Civil Maps San Francisco
Cobalt Robotics Inc. Palo Alto
Comma.ai San Francisco
Continental Tires San Jose
Cruise Automation San Francisco
DeepScale Mountain View
Delphi Labs Mountain View Yes
Drive.ai Mountain View Yes
DriverMiles San Jose
Driving Management Systems San Francisco
Drone Employee San Francisco
Efficient Power Conversion El Segundo
eMotorWerks San Carlos
Ford Silcon Valley Lab Palo Alto Yes
General Motors Advanced Technology Palo Alto Yes
Google San Francisco
Honda Research Institute Mountain View Yes
Hyundai Ventures Menlo Park
Intel San Francisco
Liquid Robotics Sunnyvale
Lyft San Francisco
Mercedez-Benz R&D Sunnyvale Yes
Microsoft San Francisco
Motionloft San Francisco
Nauto, Inc. Palo Alto
NIO (formerly NextEV USA) San Jose Yes
Nissan Research Center Sunnyvale Yes
Nuro Mountain View Yes
Nvidia Oakland Yes
Otto San Francisco
PlusAI, Inc. Los Altos Yes
Porsche Digital Santa Clara
Quanergy Systems Sunnyvale
Renovo.auto Campbell Yes
RideCell San Francisco
RPM Ventures Menlo Park
Starsky Robotics San Francisco
Step AI San Francisco
Strobe San Francisco
Swift Navigation San Francisco
Telenav Santa Clara Yes
Tesla San Francisco, Corte Madera, San Leandro Yes
Toyota InfoTechnology Center USA Mountain View
Uber Palo Alto
Uber (UATC LLC) San Francisco, Oakland Yes
Udacity Inc. Mountain View Yes
Valeo North America, Inc. San Bruno Yes
Velodyne LiDAR San Jose
Veniam Mountain View
Vivify Truck San Francisco
VoicePark San Francisco
Volkswagen Electronics Research Lab Belmont Yes
Volvo Mountain View
Waymo Mountain View Yes
Wheego Sonoma Yes
Zendrive San Francisco
Zoox Menlo Park Yes


there more to that list - important ones that are still in stealth mode.

LOTS of companies going after electric and high-tech next gen cars.

many of those people cycle around between the various domain companies (ones in their field). some of my peers have left to join medical equipment startups (also a hot field and it leverages the functional-safety and embedded systems skills that automotive engineers often have). but make no mistake, people are here because of the choice in jobs. NO ONE with any experience is going to leave all this and relocate to oneHorseTown, USA.

there's simply too much going on, here, and everyone in this field knows it.

 

[TESLER2013]

Read the tweet. He actually said “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 [California].” So as of yesterday he is not planning on shutting down Fremont. He also said they would sue and they have already done that. I would not bet on him bluffing.

If you read the Tweet, he is threatening to close the Fremont plant. That is why I posted what I wrote lol. And yes, I'll call his bluff, because he would never close that plant down unless he smokes something other than that good weed. And good luck with that political BS law suit the will go nowhere and cost our state more money. If he doesn't like California politics he should not have opened his company in a blue state.

 

[TESLER2013]

here's a short list (out of date already) of bay area 'new generation car companies':

All of the car companies, suppliers, and auto startups in Silicon Valley

(table format but does not show tabs)

Firm Bay area city CA driverless car permit

Apple Cupertino Yes
Auro Robotics Santa Clara
AutoX Palo Alto Yes
Baudi USA Sunnyvale Yes
BMW Group Technology Office Mountain View Yes
Bosch Research and Technology Center North America Palo Alto Yes
Caruma Technologies San Francisco
Civil Maps San Francisco
Cobalt Robotics Inc. Palo Alto
Comma.ai San Francisco
Continental Tires San Jose
Cruise Automation San Francisco
DeepScale Mountain View
Delphi Labs Mountain View Yes
Drive.ai Mountain View Yes
DriverMiles San Jose
Driving Management Systems San Francisco
Drone Employee San Francisco
Efficient Power Conversion El Segundo
eMotorWerks San Carlos
Ford Silcon Valley Lab Palo Alto Yes
General Motors Advanced Technology Palo Alto Yes
Google San Francisco
Honda Research Institute Mountain View Yes
Hyundai Ventures Menlo Park
Intel San Francisco
Liquid Robotics Sunnyvale
Lyft San Francisco
Mercedez-Benz R&D Sunnyvale Yes
Microsoft San Francisco
Motionloft San Francisco
Nauto, Inc. Palo Alto
NIO (formerly NextEV USA) San Jose Yes
Nissan Research Center Sunnyvale Yes
Nuro Mountain View Yes
Nvidia Oakland Yes
Otto San Francisco
PlusAI, Inc. Los Altos Yes
Porsche Digital Santa Clara
Quanergy Systems Sunnyvale
Renovo.auto Campbell Yes
RideCell San Francisco
RPM Ventures Menlo Park
Starsky Robotics San Francisco
Step AI San Francisco
Strobe San Francisco
Swift Navigation San Francisco
Telenav Santa Clara Yes
Tesla San Francisco, Corte Madera, San Leandro Yes
Toyota InfoTechnology Center USA Mountain View
Uber Palo Alto
Uber (UATC LLC) San Francisco, Oakland Yes
Udacity Inc. Mountain View Yes
Valeo North America, Inc. San Bruno Yes
Velodyne LiDAR San Jose
Veniam Mountain View
Vivify Truck San Francisco
VoicePark San Francisco
Volkswagen Electronics Research Lab Belmont Yes
Volvo Mountain View
Waymo Mountain View Yes
Wheego Sonoma Yes
Zendrive San Francisco
Zoox Menlo Park Yes


there more to that list - important ones that are still in stealth mode.

LOTS of companies going after electric and high-tech next gen cars.

many of those people cycle around between the various domain companies (ones in their field). some of my peers have left to join medical equipment startups (also a hot field and it leverages the functional-safety and embedded systems skills that automotive engineers often have). but make no mistake, people are here because of the choice in jobs. NO ONE with any experience is going to leave all this and relocate to oneHorseTown, USA.

there's simply too much going on, here, and everyone in this field knows it.

I agree.
The economy of California is the largest in the United States, boasting a $3.137 trillion gross state product as of 2019. If California were a sovereign nation (2020), it would rank as the world's fifth largest economy, ahead of India and behind Germany.
GDP: $3.137 trillion (2019)
GDP per capita: $79,405 (2019)
GDP growth: 2.6% (2019)
Labor force: 19,286,476 (December 2017)

 

[Uncle Paul]

Elon has just gone through this, with his new factory in China. Went from Zero manufacturing facility and Zero employees to fully functioning plant in just over a year.
Imagine that he has learned what it takes to start over in a new place.

Also imagine that all the Tesla faithful will embrace a new paint shop, outside the onorous constrictions of California eco fanatics. Finally we can get world class paint jobs.

California is doing a good job of driving manufacturing out of their state. They used to produce the finest aircraft, the best weapons systems, the best rockets and some of the best manufacturing companies. It was the envy of the world, and employees loved working in the fantastic climate and enjoying one of the finest educational systems in the world, but it got full of itself and began to think the government knew better how to run an economy. It was a central part of sending a Man to the Moon, gearing up to defeat the Nazi and Japaneese Imperial War Machine. We trained the troops, built the ships, grew the food and housed the workers. But slowly, over the years, most of that has been driven out, and replaced by illegal immigrants, homeless, welfare queens and a vibrant gay community. Even Hollywood studios have left the state for less overbearing overlords.

Elon is not really leading the way here...but following in the footsteps of others that got the message.

In SF, the sounds of industry will be replaced with the clicking of keyboards.

 

[linux-works]

how much breaking-edge stuff is DESIGNED in china? my guess is: not very much at all. homologation, local ordinances to be followed with updated ground clearance, etc - for the local china markets. translation and local customer support.

self-driving algorithms and code? zero. its not china's market and all that is done in the US. no secret there. its why ALL the china e-car companies have their key tech done in the bay area. also not a secret.

tesla china has no bearing at all in any of this discussion; its simply noise, to the issue at hand.

 

[wws]

...
Also imagine that all the Tesla faithful will embrace a new paint shop, outside the onorous constrictions of California eco fanatics. Finally we can get world class paint jobs...

When we rebuilt our house about a dozen years ago, we quickly learned that the locally owned and operated cabinet shops could not use the best finishes. Had to go outside the Bay Area, and preferably out of state to get "the good stuff". Fortunately our builder was part owner of a custom cabinet operation in a more rural area of California - which turned out to be a great compromise.

Similar situation with the local auto body shops and the requirements for their paint booths.

Guessing Elon caught up on some reading while waiting for the baby to arrive, and finally got to Ayn Rand. Now he is looking for his own 'Galt's Gulch'...

Makes me want to reserve a Cybertruck.

 

[TESLER2013]

Toyota reached the same conclusion. Manufacturing things in California just doesn't make economic sense for a variety of reasons and after shutting down Fremont in 2010 they also moved their corporate HG to Texas in 2014. Tesla may also follow their lead and keep a design studio in the Golden State but that's about it.

You failed to mention that it was a joint relationship at that plant with General Motors. Toyota wasn't satisfied with the relationship with General Motors for many years. Add the 2008-2009 recession caused by the mortgage crisis, and they decided to leave. The Fremont plant was making the Pontiac Aztec for GM at the time which is known as the worst failure next to the Ford Edsel. The sold very few of them and it impacted many vendors in the bay area including my company. Toyota was making Corollas at the time. They were able to move production easily to newer plants. The plant also needed a "retooling" which Toyota didn't want to pay for and GM didn't have the money to do. The closing of that plant was not as described by you. It was a break up of a relationship. Sorry, I grew up in Fremont. I read the newspaper everyday.

 

[Uncle Paul]

Believe the reason so many new electric vehicle startups are happening in Silicone Valley is that there is so much available investment capital available. Startups can raise tons of $ there, mostly because of the success of Tesla. Owners can get huge salaries and paydays while their new companies burn through the investor's funds.
When the companies get larger they begin to look at other sources of manufacturing.
They used to simply outsource all their manufacturing to China or other cheap Asian countries. Ship all that stuff to developed countries where citizens have lots of disposable (debt) dollars to keep buying the latest cell phone or computer.

Have not seen any of these listed companies actually start up manufacturing and sales from any of these factories that most have gotten free from desperate municipalities. They are sucking up all the investor money plus all the lavish tax incentives. This using OPM has make the owners risk free ways to try to follow into the footsteps of very successful Tesla.

Don't believe we will ever again see the industrialization of California.

 

[house9]

For all those that are excited about better paint jobs once Telsa moves out of California (seems unlikely) lets not forget why California has stricter regulations regarding paint: CANCER

- Automotive Refinishing | California Air Resources Board
- Hexavalent chromium - Wikipedia
- Cadmium - Wikipedia

 

[linux-works]

the startups are not making plastic widgets for cars. they are working on self-driving, lidar, vision, steering, battery tech, navigation, even network reliability and redundancy.

if you are thinking 'detroit', that's the wrong mind set.

here, its about algorithms and new approaches in trying to solve the hardest problem of our generation (imho).

its not a scam to 'burn thru money'. that's hilarious.

 

[TESLER2013]

But slowly, over the years, most of that has been driven out, and replaced by illegal immigrants, homeless, welfare queens and a vibrant gay community.

Blaming gay people for California's problems. Nice.

 

[linux-works]

Have not seen any of these listed companies actually start up manufacturing and sales from any of these factories that most have gotten free from desperate municipalities

not sure what you are referring to, but again, silicon valley is NOT detroit, not going to be, not wanting to be, not gonna happen. instead, we don't usually have assembly lines here. tesla put one here so they could iterate thru it faster, having the design engineers being able to drive there in short time to fix issues or understand new ones. if they had to fly to texas, for example, and stay there for days or weeks to find/fix production problems, that would cost more, take more time and you would not have happy engineers if they are told to spend lots of time away from home.

when you are doing new things like tesla, you want tight control over the line. you don't get that when its off in another geography.

tesla could not have done this anywhere else.

 

[TechOps]

Here's my prediction on what will happen:

(Let's assume for a moment that the new corporate HQ is going to be Austin.)

- HQ will move to a temporary office space in Austin, and build a new HQ campus in a nearby suburb. (Maybe this is already in the planning stages).
This means Finance & Accounting, Legal, HR, CEO's office, Product Management, Investor Relations, Sales and Marketing, Retail / Service, and all other corporate functions move there.

- Palo Alto will remain as a major engineering center, now with less crowding due to a lot of additional space freed up
Engineers will be offered a standard relocation package to Austin, and based on their group, will be allowed to stay in Palo Alto or accept the generous package to move.

- A new engineering center will be established in Austin at the new HQ. Recruiting will begin for this, and new programs will be primarily staffed here. Existing teams may move in bulk if the manager and team members all agree. An example of this is hardware design. Austin is a mecca for hardware design engineers, and the HW 3.0 is being fabbed in Austin already.

- Giga/Tera Texas will simultaneously being construction somewhere between Austin and San Antonio, in a more rural area with large open land and industrial type zoning, maybe 20-30 miles from new HQ (like Palo Alto / Fremont setup).
We can assume that this is already well underway, and a site is most likely under contract, given Elon's threat/promise tweets.

- Key production employees will be given generous relocation packages to Texas. Given their blue collar manufacturing jobs and salary levels, many will take it. The quality of life improvement for them will be dramatic. Those who were renting 2BR/2BA homes in the east bay (or all the way out towards Tracy) and having long commutes, will now be able to live close to work and purchase brand new 4BR/3BA tract homes in new developments. Their kids' school districts will be dramatically better and their purchasing power will be considerably better in the greater Austin area.

- Fremont will continue production at least for the next year, and then new programs such as CT will start in Texas. Mainstream scaleout production for e.g. Model 3, Y will move to Texas, which frees up space for more specialty programs like Roadster 2.0, and Model S/X which have lower production numbers, will remain in Fremont.

- Once Texas is scaled up and operating at larger production volumes, it gives more operational freedom to shift programs, and Maybe Tera Texas 2, or another location, could be set up, allowing Tesla to mothball and sell Fremont. I see that happening in 2-3 years, if it happens.

I moved from the Bay Area, where I lived for over 20 years and worked as a computer engineer and software / hardware designer, to Austin, a year and a half ago. There's a large talent pool in Austin, and Facebook, Google, Apple, Oracle, Samsung, Intel, AMD, and many, many other tech companies are here and investing billions of dollars in expansion. It's just weird enough to be fun for progressives, but not sanctimonious and PC-police/SJW to be offputting to middle of the road engineers who aren't interested in politics. Also very easy to do remote work between Austin/Bay Area, with a 2 hour time difference and multiple direct flights per day.

By the way, these are all my own guesses based on what I've observed publicly. I don't have any inside knowledge or friends who work at Tesla.

 

[Uncle Paul]

Just saying that California has new and different priorities. They seem focused more on loud fringe groups than supporting heavy manufacturing. They have restricted most of the farmers/growers in the central valley by cutting off their water and creating a new dust bowl. San Francisco allows essentially no new residental single family housing to be built. Also does not allow existing older housing stock to be torn down to enable more efficient higher rise residential buildings. They want to maintain the quaint nature of their city. Totally understand this, but it comes at a cost. With lots more tech jobs opening up in SF, workers need to spend a huge amount of their paychecks to pay the super high housing costs or constantly rising rental prices.
Even with large salaries they still live paycheck to paycheck to maintain a tremendously high cost of living.
Most everyone is there for the dream of starting up their own company, then selling (exit strategy) it for millions. For every success there are soul sucking failures, with those people being forced back into the workforce and hoping for another lucky break.

Most all the extremely high taxes are being focused on governmental "do gooder" policies. Putting homeless people in luxury hotels, free needle/condom programs, higher unemployment checks, leaving homeless encampments along urban city streets and curbs. Underpasses are given over to more homeless encampments and the police are told to leave them alone in their squalor. Homeless are allowed to deficate and urinate in the gutters. Lower tuition is charged to foreign students while locals are driven to taking out huge student loans to pay outrageous and constantly rising tuition costs. Property taxes are ever rising as with each sale the taxes are increased due to highly inflationary housing costs. Businesses are constantly being burdened with new and substantial taxes to cover more and more community programs.

Now I understand that many feel this is the enlightened way forward. That it is a progressive agenda that fulfills some societal good, but never the less, it will tend to drive out the very manufacturing core that made the city great in the beginning.

Not just SF, but also Detroit, New York, Chicago. Most of the most successful cities the World has ever knows, are not in the process of decay and ruin. Also seen this around the World in progressive cities like Rome, Paris, London, Moscow. People and businesses are fleeing them to areas with more individual freedom, with fewer governmental burdens.

 

[linux-works]

All these experts about automaking in California, and I doubt many of them know how many tires are on a car.

if you are trolling, try harder. I'd give that a 4/10.

 

[DMC-Orangeville]

I have to chuckle when I read all of the "California is bad for businesses" rhetoric I read here. I live in the socialist republic of Canada. Manufacturers are leaving Canada in droves - almost all heading to the USA. Our red tape and extremely pro-labour focused laws chase them away. PS - not Corporate taxes. Corporate taxes are on par with the USA.

We do, however, have a very large group of high tech schools, and software engineers in Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal (other areas too....but these are the big ones). This has led to lots of fantastic tech startups. As soon as most of these start-ups become a decent entity, they tend to be bought and moved, or just re-locate........usually to California......because that is where they can grow.

I'm waiting to see what Tesla does with Hibar, a Toronto area battery tech company. Telsa bought them last October. Our Governments and media are pushing to do some manufacturing of batteries in Canada. Especially since the "battery guru" Jeff Dahn is based at Dalhousie U in Halifax, there is a new cobalt sulfate factory start-up in Ontario (taking China and Congo out of the supply chain), and the Hibar purchase. It won't happen. My guess is that Hibar engineering will be moved to California, and manufacturing to a red state

 

[linux-works]

Just saying that California has new and different priorities. They seem focused more on loud fringe groups than supporting heavy manufacturing.

calif was never about heavy manuf. that's not a good use of the people that live and work here, overall. you don't populate the place with phd's and such and then go talking about HM.

asia has that locked up, more or less. and once asia becomes too expensive, it moves to, say, africa (over the decades). the race-to-the-bottom will continue as long as the 'job creators' can keep it going.

With lots more tech jobs opening up in SF, workers need to spend a huge amount of their paychecks to pay the super high housing costs or constantly rising rental prices.
Even with large salaries they still live paycheck to paycheck to maintain a tremendously high cost of living.

100% true, no argument there.

Most everyone is there for the dream of starting up their own company, then selling (exit strategy) it for millions. For every success there are soul sucking failures, with those people being forced back into the workforce and hoping for another lucky break.

you are not referring to working guys, you are referring to the c-levels and mba types. and that's a constant no matter where they are, quite independent of locale.

the guys who write code, who design algorithms, who do the testing, the docs, the customer support - those are not here to 'get rich'. they generally care about their jobs, they are not out for the buck as the primary incentive. builders and makers are quite different people from the c-levels. very very different.

silicon valley is great for the makers and builders and designers. the ceo's are dime a dozen. you can find them anywhere. they just want us to think they're special, but they aren't. its a con.

 

[electricar]

You failed to mention that it was a joint relationship at that plant with General Motors. Toyota wasn't satisfied with the relationship with General Motors for many years. Add the 2008-2009 recession caused by the mortgage crisis, and they decided to leave. The Fremont plant was making the Pontiac Aztec for GM at the time which is known as the worst failure next to the Ford Edsel. The sold very few of them and it impacted many vendors in the bay area including my company. Toyota was making Corollas at the time. They were able to move production easily to newer plants. The plant also needed a "retooling" which Toyota didn't want to pay for and GM didn't have the money to do. The closing of that plant was not as described by you. It was a break up of a relationship. Sorry, I grew up in Fremont. I read the newspaper everyday.

As I remember it GM was done with NUMMI when the company went bankrupt ( the Aztec was definitely symptomatic of their problems ). Toyota continued making Corollas there for a while but the high taxes, the high cost of labor, the high cost of living, and the union were why they moved production to other plants. The plant did indeed need retooling but it would have been counter-productive for them to make that investment given these other structural problems. Tesla has managed to avoid the union but the other problems remain. California used to have multiple car factories but Tesla is the only one left and that only happened because they bought Femont from NUMMI at a fire sale price. It was probably the only reason they were able to get the company off the ground but if they are to become the manufacturing powerhouse that Elon envisions they need to move US manufacturing elsewhere, probably Texas.

 

[MXLRplus]

calif was never about heavy manuf.

Wow. I worked the Space Shuttle, DC10/KC10, the B1, B2, C17, etc.

You must be young. Don't worry, you grow out of it.