Elon Musk announces Tesla to move headquarters from Silicon Valley to Texas

Tesla Inc. chief executive Elon Musk announced on Thursday that the company is planning to move its headquarters from Silicon Valley in California to Austin, Texas. Addressing the employees at his company’s annual meeting, the 50-year-old billionaire said that Tesla was aiming to bolster its output by 50 per cent with the relocation. Musk, who shifted to Texas in December, is building a massive car and battery manufacturing complex there. 

"I'm excited to announce that we're moving our headquarters to Austin, Texas. This is not a matter of, sort of, Tesla leaving California," he was quoting as telling stakeholders by AP. Additionally, he said that the electric car maker now plans to increase the input from the main California factory and Nevada factory by 50 per cent. 

Plant in California is 'jammed'

Notably, Tesla is not the only company to quit Silicon Valley. Previously multi nations like Oracle, HP and Toyota Motor shifted their bases from the San Francisco Bay area. While Texas is known to have lower taxes, extensive labour and less stringent regulations as compared to California,  Musk said that the reason behind the move to the California factory in Fremont was becoming “jammed.” In addendum, he also touted that the coastal state was also posing problems to his employees in finding affordable housing. 

Meanwhile, Tesla recently said that it has delivered around 241,300 electric vehicles in the third quarter even though it struggled with a global shortage of computer chips that have hit the entire auto industry. According to AP, Tesla, which is based in Palo Alto, California, saw sales from July through September beat Wall Street estimates of 227,000 sales worldwide. Tesla’s third-quarter sales rose 72 per cent over the 140,000 deliveries that the firm made for the same period a year ago. 

Associated Press revealed that so far this year, Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company has sold around 627,300 vehicles. This puts Tesla on pace to soundly beat last year’s total of 499,550. Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives reportedly told the investors that the pace of Tesla deliveries in the US and China has been strong for the past month or so. 

Image: AP