Tesla to move HQ to Texas

Electric car leader Tesla will move its corporate headquarters from California’s Bay Area to Austin, Texas.

It means one of the biggest players in Silicon Valley will now call another region home.

Elon Musk announced the planned move during a shareholder meeting this week. Musk himself has moved to Texas to focus on SpaceX and Tesla’s new Austin Gigafactory.

As Bloomberg points out, Texas has no personal income tax whereas California imposes the highest personal income levies in the nation on its wealthiest residents.

However, Musk was at pains to point out that the company’s Fremont, California facility would not be going anywhere. Quite the contrary.

“To be clear though, we will be continuing to expand our activities in California,” Musk said. “This is not a matter of Tesla leaving California. Our intention is to actually increase output from Fremont and from a gig in Nevada by 50 per cent.”

Tesla’s move echoes Toyota, which a few years ago shifted its US HQ from LA to Dallas. Texas has cheaper housing and less traffic.

In other Tesla news, the company this week said it had paid off its $1.9b loans for the new Shanghai Gigafactory – where Australia gets its Model 3s, and will get its Model Ys, from – a claimed 16 months early.

It’s been a mixed week for Tesla.

On the upside it delivered 241,300 new electric cars to buyers in the third-quarter of 2021, a new record.

On the ugly side, former Tesla worker Owen Diaz successfully sued the company for a hostile workplace and racial harassment, and was awarded a massive payout.