Tesla To Move HQ From Palo Alto To Austin, Elon Musk Says

PALO ALTO, CA — Tesla is moving its headquarters from Palo Alto to Austin, CEO Elon Musk announced during the company’s shareholder meeting on Thursday.

The electric vehicle company was founded in San Carlos and has been based in Palo Alto since 2010, but Musk followed through on threats he made last year to relocate the company’s headquarters out of California in response to local COVID-19 restrictions.

Musk said during the meeting that the lack of affordable housing in the Bay Area limited how big Tesla could scale in the region, according to CNBC. However, he said that Tesla plans to expand activities in California and increase output in its Fremont and Nevada factories by 50 percent.

“Just to be clear, though, we will be continuing to expand our activities in California,” Musk said, according to the Verge. “So this is not a matter of Tesla leaving California.”

Tesla’s headquarters currently sit at Deer Creek Road in Palo Alto, near the Los Altos Hills border.

The 50-year-old executive added that the new plant in Austin, which is under construction, will take time to “get to high volume” even after it is built.

In May 2020, Musk lashed out at Alameda County public health officials on Twitter after Tesla was not allowed to reopen its Fremont factory due to pandemic restrictions at the time.

“Frankly, this is the final straw,” Musk wrote. “Tesla will now move its HQ and future programs to Texas/Nevada immediately. If we even retain Fremont manufacturing activity at all, it will be dependent on how Tesla is treated in the future. Tesla is the last carmaker left in CA.”

Tesla will join Oracle and Hewlett-Packard in the Lone Star State. Both of those tech giants also announced they would be relocating their headquarters from Silicon Valley to Austin in late 2020.