AUSTIN – (Realty News Report) – Tesla, which is led by CEO Elon Musk, is moving its headquarters to Austin from Palo Alto, Calif.
“I’m excited to announced we are moving our headquarters to Austin, Texas,” Musk said at the company’s annual shareholders meeting Thursday.
Tesla is constructing a massive electric vehicle manufacturing factory on the east side of Austin on 2,000-acre tract bordering the Colorado River. The site provides enough land for the Tesla giga factory with plenty of land remaining for a headquarters campus.
Musk said California’s high housing costs contributed to the decision to move Tesla headquarters to Texas. And there was a dispute last year with Musk becoming angry because California officials wanted Tesla’s factory in Fremont, Calif. shut down due to Covid restrictions.
California to Texas Exodus
A number of California firms have moved their headquarters to Texas recently, including CBRE, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Oracle, Charles Schwab and the AECOM design engineering firm.
Around the world, Tesla has more than 70,000 employees.
Musk also operates his SpaceX firm in Texas, in addition to a tunnel firm called The Boring Company. The Boring firm has approached San Antonio officials about a tunnel train that would take people from the airport to downtown.
Telsa’s $1.1 billion EV plant, to be located on the east side of Austin will employ 5,000 with average pay of $47,147. Some 65 percent of the employees will be blue-collar types with no college degree.
The 4.5 million-SF factory will be built near the Colorado River in southeastern Travis County near Highway 130 and Harold Green Road. The plant will produce Tesla’s Cybertruck pickup and other electric vehicles.
Tesla received a large incentive package for the car plant – about $61 million in tax breaks from the Del Valle school district and Travis County.
Last year Tesla closed on the land deal, for the factory, paying $97 million for 2,100 acres. The seller is Martin Marietta, a North Carolina cement maker, had used the property for years to mine gravel.
Musk said the factory will be a park-like “ecological paradise” with fish in its streams and hikers on its pathways. No mention of the site’s uninspiring gravel pits, which were almost depleted of rock.
The Austin area is also expected to land a massive Samsung chip plant, possibly in Taylor, Texas.
Oct. 8, 2021 Realty News Report Copyright 2021
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File: Tesla Moving HQ to Texas From California
Image: Cybertruck. Courtesy Tesla Inc.
File: Elon Musk. Del Valle.Tesla Moving HQ to Texas From California. Highway 130.