News
Feb 09, 2022
LA Times: Is Austin, Texas, Becoming the Next Silicon Valley?
WASHINGTON — When Tesla announced last fall that it was moving its corporate headquarters from California to Texas, officials in Sacramento seemed more surprised than concerned.
After all, Tesla was expanding its sprawling Fremont, Calif., assembly plant, which already employs thousands of people. It’s building a battery factory in the Northern California town of Lathrop.
And real estate brokers say the company is leasing more office space in Palo Alto, where its corporate headquarters had been located since 2009. Tesla was founded in nearby San Carlos in 2003.
Yet the decision by the electric vehicle pioneer’s chief executive, Elon Musk, to move Tesla’s headquarters to the Texas state capital of Austin may signal gathering clouds on the horizon of California’s economic future.
Musk, in his characteristically flamboyant style, said its Texas operations could scale up to 20,000 employees. Its Austin-area factory has the potential to produce three times as many vehicles as the Fremont facility, said Ives of Wedbush.
Over the next 18 to 24 months, Ives said, Tesla is likely to move the R&D and design operations now in Palo Alto to Austin.