Tesla HQ is getting a new home.
“I’m excited to announce that we’re moving our headquarters to Austin, Texas,” CEO Elon Musk said Thursday during a Tesla shareholders meeting.
The electric car company is currently based in Palo Alto, California, near its original headquarters in San Carlos, and its first factory, in Fremont. Musk said Thursday that there is a “limit to how big you can scale in the Bay area.”
He cited housing affordability and the long commutes it can create as hurdles for its current location, and said the Austin factory is five minutes from the airport and 15 minutes from downtown. The median home price in Palo Alto is $3.3 million, according to Realtor.com, whereas the median home price in Austin is $588,000.
Musk himself said in December that he moved to Texas, and one of his other companies, SpaceX, is developing a massive rocket system known as “Starship” in South Texas.
Despite the move, Musk said Tesla (TSLA) plans to continue to “significantly” expand in California.
“This is not a matter of, sort of, Tesla leaving California,” he said. He added that the company intended to increase output from its Fremont and Nevada factories by 50%.
Tesla could not be reached for additional comment Thursday night. The company does not typically engage with traditional news media.
Back in May 2020, Musk said in a series of tweets that Tesla would move the company’s headquarters to Texas or Nevada. That came after a dispute between Musk and Alameda County, California, officials over the safety of Tesla’s Fremont factory due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported when Elon Musk initially tweeted that Tesla would move its headquarters. Musk tweeted that intention in May 2020.
