Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Businesses

Tesla Announces New Engineering HQ In California (thehill.com) 133

Slashdot reader Phact shares a report from The Hill: Elon Musk announced during a joint press conference with California Gov. Gavin Newsom that Tesla would be returning its global engineering headquarters to California, two years after a dramatic exit that saw the electric car company leave the Golden State for a facility in Austin, Texas. Tesla will open up shop in the former home of Hewlett Packard in Palo Alto, Musk said. The facility will serve as the company's engineering headquarters while the corporate headquarters remains in Austin.

Musk called the move into HP's old building a "poetic transition from the company that founded Silicon Valley to Tesla." Newsom has been a proponent of electric vehicles and revolutionizing America's energy production, and said he hopes the partnership between Musk and California will allow the state to "dominate in this space and change the way we produce and consume energy in this state, and this nation and the world we are trying to build." [...] Musk did not specifically address the reasoning for returning Tesla's headquarters to Silicon Valley. It's unclear if the state offered any incentives for the company to return, or if Musk simply wanted to be closer to the Twitter headquarters, which is located in San Francisco.
Tesla moved its headquarters out of California in late 2021 and into Texas. "At the time of the move, Musk was in an ongoing battle with Alameda County public health officials over his desire to reopen the Fremont manufacturing plant in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic," reports The Hill.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Tesla Announces New Engineering HQ In California

Comments Filter:
  • Poor Texas (Score:4, Insightful)

    by The Evil Atheist ( 2484676 ) on Friday February 24, 2023 @05:26AM (#63319465)
    You know your state's a shithole when a tech company would choose regulations over your free market utopia.
    • Re:Poor Texas (Score:4, Insightful)

      by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Friday February 24, 2023 @05:56AM (#63319483)

      This is what happens when you can't keep the lights on.

    • Re:Poor Texas (Score:5, Informative)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Friday February 24, 2023 @06:40AM (#63319521) Homepage Journal

      Texas has tried and tried to turn Austin into another Silicon Valley, but it had too much IBM in it for that– and you know, the weather is trash. Unless you are already successful, it costs too much to live there — Austin is literally just as expensive as California now, including taxes, and the traffic is just as bad. I-35 is a fucking parking lot. They ran the highway right through town and now they can't expand it, the idiots. You're supposed to loop around the town, like they did in Houston, that is better for flow, noise, pollution...

      • Well not expanding isn't usually the problem: induced demand means that the traffic levels will rise back up until either the highway is clogged again or the feeder roads are so clogged they can't feed enough cars in.

        The real problem is running the highway through the middle of town amma making the middle of town suck so people only want to drive through it.

        • Re:Poor Texas (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Megane ( 129182 ) on Friday February 24, 2023 @08:41AM (#63319709)

          The real problem is that Austin's philosophy on building roads has for decades been "don't build it and they won't come", then they tried to turn themselves into a tech hub. (Note: "Texas" wasn't trying to turn Austin into Silicon Valley, Austin themselves were the ones pushing it.) Only recently they have started upgrading their roads, at least 20 years too late. It usually takes as long to get from south Austin to Pflugerville or Cedar Park as it does to get from south Austin to San Antonio. The guy who designed the I-35 downtown elevated lanes even said years ago that he was sorry and it was a bad design.

          And then they built a "bypass" toll road, which is like ten miles east of Austin, hardly useful if you're going to or from Austin.

          • Who wants to give up scenic Silicon Valley for a builder-grade apartment complex along the jammed up roads in the outskirts of Round Rock, with a guaranteed hour commute to mandatory office space way down in Del Valle?

            (crickets)

          • This isn't ignorance or incompetence but deliberate planning by Austin, and it is very defensible from both liberal and conservative viewpoints. It's the liberalness of Austin that allows them to think differently enough to follow a (slightly) more enlightened planning strategy, but it's the fiscal conservatives who win in the end, because road infrastructure kills cities.

            Austin has the most liberal and balanced planning department in TX by far and they are falling "less hard" into the trap of unlimited roa
      • Texas has tried and tried to turn Austin into another Silicon Valley, but it had too much IBM in it for that– and you know, the weather is trash. Unless you are already successful, it costs too much to live there — Austin is literally just as expensive as California now, including taxes, and the traffic is just as bad. I-35 is a fucking parking lot. They ran the highway right through town and now they can't expand it, the idiots. You're supposed to loop around the town, like they did in Houston, that is better for flow, noise, pollution...

        I was told that when Stanford was setting up its new industrial park, they looked around for possible tenants. IBM was willing, but wanted all of the space. Stanford said no, because they didn't want a monoculture. IBM built their facility in San Jose instead, and many companies, including HP, occupied Silicon Valley, benefiting from contact with each other and with Stanford, a premier research institution. Perhaps Austin didn't learn from Stanford, or perhaps they had no choice.

        • by ZipK ( 1051658 )
          IBM opened its first facility in San Jose in 1943. Was Stanford developing its industrial park that early?
          • IBM opened its first facility in San Jose in 1943. Was Stanford developing its industrial park that early?

            The events I was speaking of took place in the 1960s. I guess IBM expanded their presence in San Jose rather than in Silicon Valley.

            • " their presence in San Jose rather than in Silicon Valley"
              Are you aware of where both San Jose, CA and Stanford, CA are located?

              • " their presence in San Jose rather than in Silicon Valley" Are you aware of where both San Jose, CA and Stanford, CA are located?

                Actually, I am. Although I live in New Hampshire today, I have lived in Menlo Park, Stanford, Palo Alto and Mountain View; I have a relative who lives in Sunnyvale; and I used to know people who lived in Cupertino and Los Altos Hills.

      • The US needs a better public transportation system. We got too relent on cars and personal transportation, so we are shooting ourselves in the foot whenever we need to grow or expand a community. Just to park your car you will need 75-100Sq Feet of land, to support people who would take up 1 sq/ft, (or 9 sq/ft for normal human distance)

        Bikes, Public Train system, affordable and available Taxi (or Taxi like) system. Where we can get from our residential areas to commercial, shopping or industrial ones in un

        • It changes over time, but still a ways to go. I've noticed in the last twenty years or so that more upscale apartments were starting to be build near transit stops (light rail, train, BART). In the past this sort of thing was shunned because only poor people needed mass transit or hung around those stations. So now being near these spots is cool again. So at the BART/lightrail meeting in Milpitas (ie, grasshopper's jump to San Jose) a whole slew of brand new apartments have sprung up. Also apartments ar

          • LA is far too spread out have anything but car culture.

            LA needs the same thing every other congested city needs, elevated PRT. But nobody wants to try anything new, everyone wants to keep doing what we're doing that isn't working.

            • It grew out instead of up, and it grew extremely fast. If they had built a good elevated rail, or subway, in the 30s it would be far too small and inadequate for 2023.

              • Hence elevated PRT and not rail, it's potentially lightweight enough that it can share space with other transportation infrastructure and it can be retrofit into place. The vehicles don't have to deal with the lumps and bumps of roadways, and they don't need as much crash protection. Ideally you'd also charge them from the rail so they wouldn't need much battery.

    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      And in real world, from the story:

      >It’s unclear if the state offered any incentives for the company to return, or if Musk simply wanted to be closer to the Twitter headquarters, which is located in >San Francisco.
      +
      >The governor, who has known for Musk for decades, said it was a point of personal pride to have Tesla in California.

      >“Tesla is a California company,” Newsom said. “It started here first.”

      >Newsom added that California has been committed to supporting Te

      • Good thing Texas government is small, because it's leaders most certainly are highly corrupt at all levels.

      • True that Texas is nowhere near this corrupt. Their government is simply too small to wield that kind of power.

        News of what Abbott and Paxton have done in Texas would make any mafia don blush in response. As far as I can tell they are criminals in office.

    • Re:Poor Texas (Score:5, Informative)

      by friend ( 33664 ) on Friday February 24, 2023 @10:17AM (#63319941) Homepage

      The Tesla global HQ moved to Austin, and it's staying there. The rest of the operations at the Tesla Fremont factory never left California.

      This story is not about Tesla moving anything back to California, it's about them opening a new Engineering HQ.

      • Re:Poor Texas (Score:5, Insightful)

        by mspohr ( 589790 ) on Friday February 24, 2023 @12:41PM (#63320445)

        Probably couldn't convince California engineers to move to Texas. (Big surprise.) So, gave into the reality that California has better brains, quality of life, etc.
        Company HQ is just a skeleton moved for tax scam reasons.
        Engineers do the real work.

    • The top 3 important words in Business. Location, Location, Location.

      If you want to hire and keep engineers, you need to setup shop in a location near where they are a lot of engineers which you can pick from in a talent pool.
      Talented Engineers will often go to a location where they are a lot of engineering jobs available.

      Despite the press, and propaganda, the differences between a Red State and a Blue State in terms of freedoms and regulations isn't as big as one would think.
      Red States too like making a bu

      • > Red States too like making a bunch of laws many
        > are just stupid

        That one in particular was a big WTF for me when musk originally wanted to pack everything up and move it all to Texas... a state whose populace and government are so fundamentally opposed to electric cars that it's actually illegal to sell them there. You can still GET a Tesla in texas, of course. But to do so you need to jump through some legal loopholes where technically you buy it in another state and it's just delivered to you in

        • To be fair, it isn't that Texas outlaws EV sales, However all cars need to be purchased via a 3rd party Dealer. This is something that Tesla doesn't do. Also dealerships are not too big on EV, mostly due to a lack of maintenance which is their big money maker, so they are not to keen on having a good supply of EV made from other brands like GM and Ford.

          Now part of the reason for the law, was to make sure the small business person can make a living, and not from the manufacturer pushing lemons without som

          • To be fair, it isn't that Texas outlaws EV sales, However all cars need to be purchased via a 3rd party Dealer.

            Lawmakers have always used these kinds of tactics to obviously achieve the goals they really want. Those laws came into place when there was only one serious EV maker, and they incidentally had that business model. This state being what it is, there's nothing more obvious than what they were trying to do. It was an effective ban on EV sales.

            Texas lawmakers just didn't see the writing on the wall that there would be enough demand for EVs that traditional car companies would start offering their own.

        • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

          > Red States too like making a bunch of laws many > are just stupid

          That one in particular was a big WTF for me when musk originally wanted to pack everything up and move it all to Texas... a state whose populace and government are so fundamentally opposed to electric cars that it's actually illegal to sell them there.

          Actually, that was one of the smartest decisions Musk has made. By moving the headquarters to Texas, along with adding some manufacturing in Texas, they can then petition the Texas legislature and say, "See, this archaic law is hurting a Texas company," and maybe get it changed. In other words, the hope is that their presence will give them more influence over the second-most-populous state in the country. Eventually, it will probably work (though personally, I would have made it a condition of moving to

          • the fear that most of their engineering team would refuse to move with them.

            And join competitors.

            • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

              the fear that most of their engineering team would refuse to move with them.

              And join competitors.

              *nods* That was implied. :-)

      • If someone wants to set up shop someplace that is very inexpensive, with zero government regulations or oversight, might I suggest Somalia? What's this, it doesn't make for a good engineering base? Be bold!

        • I thought the dream was for all the rich people to hide in the mountains so as to bring the rest of the economy to a grinding halt and make us realize how necessary they were to us. If there's one thing we know, is that an architect can be an economy all on his own, whereas people doing the grunt work of building and cleaning will have nowhere to go.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • California (Score:4, Insightful)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Friday February 24, 2023 @05:27AM (#63319469)

    California invents everything the rest of the states depend on. The biggest proof of this is the fact that even though Elon Musk hates many Californians, especially most Silicon Valley residents because they vote Democrat, he was forced to acknowledge that we have engineering talent here that is the best in the world. Tesla and SpaceX was originally headquartered here. Elon Musk hates the things Californians like such as universal health care, caring about the welfare of all human beings, and anti-nationalism/anti-tribalism. Ever since becoming a right-winger infected by the MAGA mind virus, Elon has entirely embraced right-wing idealogies such as tribalism/nationalism, coldness to others wellbeing, and default dislike of humans who serve him no purpose all while claiming he is a centrist.

    • by kick6 ( 1081615 )

      . Elon Musk hates the things Californians like such as universal health care, caring about the welfare of all human beings, and anti-nationalism/anti-tribalism. Ever since becoming a right-winger infected by the MAGA mind virus, Elon has entirely embraced right-wing idealogies such as tribalism/nationalism, coldness to others wellbeing, and default dislike of humans who serve him no purpose all while claiming he is a centrist.

      Or maybe he just hates when people who ostensibly have the talent he wants fill their heads with idiotic dichotomies like the ones you've laid out here.

    • by Dusanyu ( 675778 )
      Being honest there is noting that "Magical" about California that creates engineering talent it just vacuums it on like a Kerby it would not be a unsafe bet to say that most of California's engineers come from other states and nations but moved there because that's were the Jobs and the pay are. and to be honest why California is the ultimate head scratcher and i wont talk about Politics because all Politics is bullshit. but from a Geology standpoint it sits on a very nasty fault line that produced such lov
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Yogi Berra (Score:5, Funny)

    by sphealey ( 2855 ) on Friday February 24, 2023 @07:39AM (#63319593)

    "Nobody goes there anymore - it's too crowded" - attributed to Yogi Berra

  • Tantrums (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sound+vision ( 884283 ) on Friday February 24, 2023 @07:51AM (#63319613) Journal

    What is it that gives people the impression that tantrums and flip-flopping are a mark of management genius?

    Is it the "business" subgenre of reality TV?

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Honestly, it was clear that Musk is thick as pig-shit when he threw a temper tantrum at the Thai cave rescuers because they tried to explain to him that a solid metal submarine can't squeeze through the crevices of a cave, something even most 5 year olds are capable of comprehending.

      Having a bunch of money from Daddy's apartheid era emerald mine to spend on your childhood space and futuristic car fantasies doesn't make you smart, it just makes you a spoilt kid wealthy from apartheid era abuse who was fortun

    • What is it that gives people the impression that tantrums and flip-flopping are a mark of management genius?

      His net worth?

      Just spitballing, here...

    • by Jzanu ( 668651 )
      Calling his actual personal decisions on business management genius is more wrong than wrong conveys. The lost goodwill that Musk has burned through has a real monetary value. It could have been prevented by simply having someone on staff who understands what the word ethics means. As a manager Musk should know how to delegate, and ethical thinking can be delegated to those trained in it. And every one of his ventures has numerous people with the right training. Scientists study that so that their experimen
  • by SvnLyrBrto ( 62138 ) on Friday February 24, 2023 @10:37AM (#63320013)

    I have a couple of friends who (still) work for Tesla. When Musk "relocated" the company to Texas, they both told me, in no uncertain terms, that they would NOT be relocating. But they're still working for Tesla, and in the same old Deer Creek HQ campus that Musk was going to pack up and move when he decided to bend the knee to the MAGA mob. He got so few takers willing to relocate that he HAD to keep Deer Creek open, otherwise he was going to lose the vast majority of the engineering and R&D talent that was and, to his dismay, is still in Palo Alto. He got precious few takers willing to leave Fremont for Texas either, and NUMMI has been chugging along too.

    This announcement was just an attempt by Musk to save face after Tesla's much ballyhooed "departure" from California turned out to be a failed endeavor.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      > He got so few takers willing to relocate that he HAD to keep Deer Creek [CA facility] open

      If you are raised in a liberal state, moving to a place full of evangelical troglodytes & zealots is usually not a pleasant experience. And I probably less restaurant variety.

      Vice versa is probably also the case, I imagine. Ex-Texans would have to work with openly LGBTQ+ people, which makes evangelicals go "eeeww" because they are taught it's "icky". Jesus even says so in the Bible: "Those fruiteth cakes are

      • Correction: "And I probably less restaurant variety" -- should be "And TX probably has less restaurant variety".

        Clarification: per "even says so in the Bible" -- I won't dispute the Bible classifies LGBTQ as a sin, but it doesn't say to ostracize them. Drinking too much is also a sin, but I rarely see evangelicals giving heavy drinkers the stink-eye (outside of avoiding a really drunk person, which most do for safety).

        • > the Bible classifies LGBTQ as a sin, but it doesn't
          > say to ostracize them

          That is exceptionally small comfort. Because while you are technically correct that it doesn't call for ostracism; what it actually commands its believers to do is *murder* us.

      • Yeah, pretty much. Of the two friends I have at Tesla, one is gay and the other is a woman working in a traditionally male speciality who also has zero interest in producing offspring. So not only did they not want to go in the first place. But as you point out... they're also both the sort that the locals would mob up and go after with torches and pitchforks if they were daft enough to set foot in Texas.

      • I agree with all of that except he restaurant dig. Texas food is legit. Austin has a huge variety of amazing places to eat, I think its either the best or second best in state next to Houston for food. I mean I understand all the reasons to avoid Texas like the plague, but if you find yourself without any other choice and have to be there, you'd enjoy Austin or Houston food.
      • If you are raised in a liberal state, moving to a place full of evangelical troglodytes & zealots is usually not a pleasant experience. And I probably less restaurant variety.

        Austin is like someone took a piece of California, plopped it down in the middle of Texas, and informed the Texans that it would be their capitol.

        The restaurant scene in Austin alone, let alone Texas in general, makes the food culture of California outside of Los Angeles look like a pathetic shit show. I never, ever went to a restaurant in Texas that wasn't on point. Texans will not stand for a bad restaurant like Californians will. Even their chains (e.g. Pok-e-jo's BBQ) beat most of our restaurants like a

    • There are a bunch of people on here apparently gloating at the idea that Musk is having to move back to California from Texas, often with accusations that he's become some right-wing "MAGA" Republican.

      Wow

      First, he's NOT moving Tesla's headquarters back to CA - just an engineering group. Not really surprising since his Tesla engineers were in CA and nobody likes to move themselves and their family (even if you're unhappy in a place and it's too expensive you still often stay for family reasons). As an engine

  • I wonder if it's the garage on Addison Avenue, the "classic" headquarters on Page Mill Road, or the old HQ on Hannover Street.

    When I worked there, HP kept Bill and Dave's offices preserved out nostalgia. It would be very nice if Tesla could maintain them to honor two of the seminal figures in Santa Clara valley history. Probably a forlorn hope.

  • by TomR teh Pirate ( 1554037 ) on Friday February 24, 2023 @11:13AM (#63320133)
    Most of the engineering talent at Tesla is already located in Palo Alto in overly crowded buildings, with the majority of the remaining engineers in overly crowded buildings in Fremont. I suspect Musk has done little more than lease an additional office space to warehouse the engineers he already has. But...he probably conned Newsome into giving away something he didn't need to. Musk is the ultimate rent-seeker, and this is likely more of the same.
  • by BrendaEM ( 871664 ) on Friday February 24, 2023 @12:10PM (#63320337) Homepage
    What? California is supposed to be excited?
  • by Kremmy ( 793693 ) on Friday February 24, 2023 @03:02PM (#63320863)
    People keep fleeing California for greener pastures, then coming right back.
    Maybe they should have tried to understand why before they left.

If you didn't have to work so hard, you'd have more time to be depressed.

Working...