Elon Musk Announces Tesla Will Move Headquarters to Texas

AUSTIN, Texas — Elon Musk, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc., announced Thursday during an annual meeting of stockholders that the company will move its headquarters from Palo Alto, California, to Austin, Texas.

Musk is following through on his previous threats to move the company to Texas in response to California’s coronavirus lockdown orders that forced Tesla to temporarily halt production at its factory in Fremont. Musk also announced that Tesla will expand its production at the 5.3 million square foot Fremont factory, where the Model S, Model X and Model 3 vehicles are built.

At the event, Robyn Denholm, chair of Tesla’s board of directors, said that since Sept. 2020 the company has delivered over 800,000 vehicles, started new production lines in Shanghai, China, and initiated pilot production of its own in-house battery cells. Further, Denholm said the company has also undertaken the construction of two new “giga-factories” — one in Berlin and the other in Austin.

“But maybe most importantly, our mission of accelerating the world’s transition to sustainable energy remains at the center of what we do,” Denholm said to the company’s shareholders at the event. “Over the last 12 months Tesla has continued to help shift the public perception of electric vehicles, and it wasn’t too long ago that many people were still questioning the future of EVs. I would say that today that’s no longer the case.”

There is “no doubt” that the transportation industry is turning electric, Denholm said, as evidenced by the widespread visibility of Teslas and other EVs across the country. In the third quarter of this year, Tesla produced a total of 237,823 vehicles and delivered 241,300 of its vehicles to customers, according to a press release.

Musk had announced publicly last year that he had moved his residence to Austin in order to oversee the construction of the Austin plant as well as be closer to the Boca Chica launch site of his aerospace company, SpaceX, in south Texas. While speaking at a conference hosted by The Wall Street Journal in December 2020, Musk said California has become less accommodating to start-ups and entrepreneurs.

During the meeting, Musk noted that Tesla’s production had been hindered by supplier challenges, the most notable of which is a shortage of computer chips the vehicles rely on to run their high-tech operating systems. Regardless, Musk said he was confident that Tesla’s sales volume would remain high until the shortage was alleviated.

“This is the fundamental way to think of the value of Tesla. If we are able to accelerate sustainable energy by more years – that is good,”  Musk said during the meetingReece can be reached at [email protected].