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| Tesla moves its headquarters to Texas |
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the company is moving its headquarters from Palo Alto, California's Silicon Valley, to Austin, Texas, where it built a large car and battery over a year ago.
Tesla is working with Oracle, Toyota and Hewlett-Packard to move its US headquarters from California, where taxes and living costs are relatively high, to Texas.
While Silicon Valley is a place for developing new ideas and business, Texas is known for its cheap labor and less stringent regulations.
Musk said Tesla will continue to operate its electric vehicle plant in Fremont, California, and plans to increase production there by 50%.
"We continue to expand our business in California," he said at the company's annual general meeting. So Tesla has no right to leave California.
The move means that the company's headquarters will not be the most popular for its cars. Instead, the company is headquartered in a country that cannot legally sell its cars directly to consumers.
Musk had previously threatened to pull all of the company's operations out of California in 2020 for violating the state's residency rules, which are designed to keep people safe in the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic.
In protest, the company filed a lawsuit to boycott the California plant. Musk himself moved to Texas last year, and SpaceX expanded its operations in the southern state significantly.
The CEO of the company once said that he believed California had become satisfied with its employees and business.
Tesla continues to operate in California
The company will begin building the next Gigafactory outside of Austin, USA, in 2020. Significant progress has been made in completing this work. Musk said Tesla is also considering implementing more battery storage.
The company's CEO said he chose to build a plant in Austin because employees would prefer to move to Texas. The size of the San Francisco Bay Area is limited, which makes it difficult for Californians to purchase homes.
Tesla's Austin is also located near the local airport, which Musk says is very convenient. Because of recent laws, many companies are under pressure to leave and the company is moving to Texas.