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Tesla Moves Headquarters From California To Texas (cnbc.com) 176

phalse phace writes: During Tesla's shareholder meeting today, CEO Elon Musk announced that the company's headquarters will be moving from California to Texas, making good on his threat to do so after Alameda County officials blocked the full reopening of Tesla's Fremont plant. Regardless of the move, Musk reiterated that Tesla would be increasing production at its California plant: "To be clear we will be continuing to expand our activities in California. Our intention is to increase output from Fremont and Giga Nevada by 50%. If you go to our Fremont factory it's jammed." He further added, "It's tough for people to afford houses, and people have to come in from far away.... There's a limit to how big you can scale in the Bay Area." The news comes almost a year after Musk revealed that he personally moved to Texas.
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Tesla Moves Headquarters From California To Texas

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  • About Damn Time (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bluzytrix ( 2749071 ) on Thursday October 07, 2021 @08:09PM (#61870745)
    I hope that Tesla does extremely well with this move. Removing some gravity out of silicon valley could help spark innovation in other parts of our country that area far more amenable to innovation.
    • The funny thing is, it is still illegal for Tesla to sell cars in Texas.

      • Let's see how long that lasts. I'm willing to bet Elon will be a citizen of considerable influence in Texas.

        • Re:About Damn Time (Score:4, Informative)

          by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Friday October 08, 2021 @02:11AM (#61871393)

          Let's see how long that lasts. I'm willing to bet Elon will be a citizen of considerable influence in Texas.

          The Texas legislature only meets every other year and they failed to change the law this year. So it will be at least until 2023 before Teslas can be sold in Texas.

          • Its the whole no-dealership thing isnt it? My state does the same thing with alcohol. We cannot mail order directly from a supplier. Breweries are the only direct production to consumer authorized venue and only if they obtain a local retailers license. Otherwise a manufacturer sells to a wholesaler who sells to a distributor, who then sells to the retailer. Everyone sticks their fingers in the pie; and each sale had its own tier of tax before sales tax. I dont see a dealership requirement as much different
            • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

              Its the whole no-dealership thing isnt it? My state does the same thing with alcohol.

              And that is approximately just as stupid, though at least you can argue that enforcing age limits for alcohol is harder when you aren't seeing the purchaser in person. But cars? Yeah, no, this makes no sense.

  • Musk's threat to move Tesla's HQ because of the Alameda county health order was just him grandstanding. The Fremont, California plant is still operational. Where the HQ is located is doesn't matter so much.
    • by iamnotx0r ( 7683968 ) on Thursday October 07, 2021 @08:26PM (#61870781)
      California taxes Corporate Headquarters at 16.8%.

      Texas taxes at 12.04%. This is not an empty threat. Sone state loses a shitload.
      • Property, sales, and wage taxes for the California plant are still in California.
      • The real tax benefit comes from income tax paid by employees and the sales tax from the employees buying stuff. Many rich CEOs don't pay much in income tax and many corporations have plenty of tricks to keep money away from corporate taxes.
        • The mid-level managers will get a little sticker shock when it comes to their state taxes in Texas vs. California.

          While Texas doesn't have an income tax (and won't for a long time thanks to a recent ballot initiative), everything is funded through property taxes. Industrial property taxes are negotiated and are generally very low (they are also kept private, so no one really knows what they are unless they are leaked). Home property taxes, on the other hand, are high simply because houses are expensive.

          As a

          • by kwerle ( 39371 )

            Here in San Luis Obispo, the state (CA) rate is 1.25%. The county rate is about 1%. So my property tax rate is about 2.25%.

            Texas looks about the same from here?

            • There is no Prop 13 in Texas. So that 2.5% will go up with the market value.
              • by kwerle ( 39371 )

                Yeah, that hurts. Expect something to be done about that pretty soon as folks notice the place they live becomes unbearably taxed.

                It's going to be funny watching Texas turn into California.

    • by SvnLyrBrto ( 62138 ) on Thursday October 07, 2021 @08:50PM (#61870845)

      Well, the HQ is (Currently) in Santa Clara county, not Alameda county. So Musk's petulance here is comically misdirected.

      But where the HQ is actually does matter. The headquarters is where all the R&D, prototyping, and testing is done. So when they pack that up and move it to Texas they're going to lose a lot of the more important personnel. I would actually have thought he'd close down NUMMI and move that to Texas versus Deer Creek. Minions who stand on an assembly line inserting tab A into slot B all day are fairly easy to come by. The engineers, CNC prototyping machinists, chemists, physicists, destructive testing engineers, and the like are not so fungible. I'm sure he'll get *some* takers. But quite a lot of those people (Certainly including the ones I know personally.) will have exactly zero desire to relocate to Gilead. And good jobs are *REALLY* easy to come by in Palo Alto and the surrounding environs.

      • by Darinbob ( 1142669 ) on Thursday October 07, 2021 @09:01PM (#61870871)

        Headquarters is just the address you stick on the annual report, you really don't need many people living there. Our company had headquarters bounce around a bit, and it's currently where the CEO lives even though there's not much actually being done there. In many companies the R&D is not where the headquarters are.

        • This! My own company's "headquarters" is in a skyscraper in the London inner city. 3 floors I think. That qualifies it to be the smallest and least occupied location we own. Heck about 150 employees located there it's about 1/20th the size of the other facility we have in London which is not our headquarters, or 1/50th the size of the giant business park we have in Chicago where all our R&D and trading is done.

      • And good jobs are *REALLY* easy to come by in Palo Alto and the surrounding environs.

        Yeah, but affordable housing isn't easy to come by in Palo Alto. I say this as a Bay Area resident who would like to not pay about $1 million to live in some lower/middle class house with a homeless encampment a couple blocks away. And being able to go to a store without having to circle for 15-20 minutes looking for parking would be a nice touch.

    • It affects taxes doesnt it?
  • That's fine (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 )
    there's no shortages of jobs there or people who want to start companies there. As they saying goes, don't let the door hit you where the dog should've bit you.

    He's moving so he can abuse his workers. e.g. do stuff like force them to work during deadly pandemics with inadequate safety precautions. Doing so has made him hundreds of millions of dollars by hitting certain sales targets.

    But Texas is rapidly turning blue as people used to California labor law are transplanted there and discover what it's
    • people used to California labor law are transplanted there and discover what it's like to live in a "right to work" state

      Ummm, California is also a "right to work" state

  • by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Thursday October 07, 2021 @08:33PM (#61870791)

    It's 2021, location is fake anyways. Everyone is on chat. Location of a building designated "headquarters" is moot. Tesla is a Delaware corporation, isn't it? Has anyone from Tesla even been to Delaware? Tesla is continuing to grow in California. Where do most of their top engineers reside? Where will most of the design work occur?

    • Yeah, well E.Musk will be jeered out of town if he shows his face in SFO now. So there's that about location.

  • TX being their ultimate plan...

    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Not sure about "ultimate." The FAA has been irritating Musk. Boca Chica is awfully close to Mexico. There's even at least one science fiction story about a plucky little renegade rocket company launching out of Boca Chica that hopped over the border to get away from hostile regulations.

  • Good fucking riddance Elon, and Texas is just right for a man like you, you will go completely unnoticed there.

  • Follow the money (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Phydeaux314 ( 866996 ) on Friday October 08, 2021 @05:06AM (#61871623)

    As mentioned elsewhere, this is almost certainly for tax reasons. Elon Musk has billions of dollars in stock options maturing in the next couple years, and CA has a significant income tax. Texas has no income tax, for individuals or for corporations. If Tesla plans on getting into finance - which pretty much every auto dealer does these days, as it's where the money is - then it behooves them to move as much of their income as possible to Texas.

    So, no, I don't think Tesla is going to pack up shop and leave CA: There's too much investment already here, there are too many hiring options here, and there are a bunch of excellent ports (for, say, shipping automobiles to other parts of the world) for it to make sense to abandon operations and leave. Moving some financial constructs, on the other hand, does make a fair amount of sense.

    Especially since said financial operations don't suffer millions in losses if the power grid freezes, overheats, or otherwise fails - unlike manufacturing and engineering.

  • ...it sounds about right. They've been in COSH's "Dirty Dozen" worst companies to work for for several years now.

    Tesla Motors – Fremont, California: Recordable injuries are 31% higher than industry average; serious injuries are 83% higher. Company claims recent improvement in injury rates, but CAL/OSHA now investigating reports that the company failed to report serious injuries. https://www.coshnetwork.org/es... [coshnetwork.org]

    Clearly they don't want pesky Californian health & safety inspectors stopping them from injuring, killing & making Americans sick to ensure better returns to their shareholders. Apparently, Texas is the land of the oppressed, exploited & abused. That would make, "DONT TREAD ON ME" an example of doublethink, right?

  • by magzteel ( 5013587 ) on Friday October 08, 2021 @09:37AM (#61872203)

    As expected this comment section is full of "Texas is a shithole, Texan's are stupid, Republicans are evil" comments.

    Every state has good and bad areas. Austin is a pretty nice place and a huge tech center.

    I was there for the "Republic of Texas Motorcycle rally", it was a good time. https://www.republicoftexasmot... [republicof...erally.com]

    Elon and Tesla will be fine.

  • Tesla is global, soon to be a sovereign if no other technologist innovates to compete on AGW terms

    Elon is signaling domicile is colonialism, borders restraints and governance in the absence of a universal moral fabric friction points against global warming action, investment and productivity in the quest to counter AGW.

      Elon’s thru line in Tesla and SpaceX is a single mission - AGW. One backs up the other

  • What always happens is the senior execs move to some place, buy homes there, everyone else just goes on with their lives.

    If you don't actually work in the HQ building, it's meaningless.

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