Tesla Inc. TSLA 1.77% said it would establish its global engineering headquarters in Palo Alto, California, a state that Chief Executive Elon Musk has at times criticized.
Musk relocated Tesla’s headquarters from Silicon Valley to Texas in 2021 and said at the time that the company’s ability to grow in the San Francisco Bay Area was limited. He previously compared California to a sports team resting on their laurels after a winning streak, saying, “They tend to get a little bit smug, a little bit entitled, and then they don’t win the championship anymore.”
Mr Musk struck a more cheerful tone on Wednesday night, saying at an event in Palo Alto that the company will “build the future here”.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Wednesday announced the location of the company’s new global engineering headquarters. The system will be housed in the former building of the computer manufacturer Hewlett Packard in Palo Alto. Photo: Tesla
Tesla maintains a presence in Silicon Valley after moving its headquarters to Texas and employs about 48,000 people in California, Musk said. That equates to more than a third of the company’s global workforce at the end of the year.
Many of these employees work across the San Francisco Bay Area in Fremont, California, where the company’s first auto plant is located. This facility has the capacity to produce around 650,000 vehicles per year, Tesla said.
Subscribe to Newsletter
technology
A weekly round-up of tech reviews, headlines, columns and your questions answered by WSJ’s personal tech gurus.
The company has since opened vehicle manufacturing facilities in China, Texas and Germany.
On Wednesday, Mr. Musk said Tesla will continue to invest in California even as it expands elsewhere.
Tesla had layoffs in California last year. Last year, Tesla laid off more than 200 employees when it closed an office in San Mateo, California. The site was home to employees working on Tesla’s advanced driver assistance system called Autopilot.
The auto company led by Mr. Musk is in expansion mode to meet its goal of selling 20 million vehicles a year by the end of the decade. In January, Tesla announced it was considering more than $775 million in expansions at its Austin-area facility.
Tesla cars at the Fremont, California plant in 2022.
Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Other companies run by Mr. Musk also have large footprints in California. Twitter Inc. is based in San Francisco and the rocket company SpaceX is based in Hawthorne.
Write to Joseph De Avila at [email protected] and Rebecca Elliott at [email protected]
Corrections & Enhancements
Elon Musk said the decision to build Tesla’s global engineering headquarters in California is a “poetic transition from the company that founded Silicon Valley to Tesla.” An earlier version of this article incorrectly quoted him as “poetic translation.” (Corrected on February 22nd)
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All rights reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Published February 23, 2023 in print as “Tesla Sets Palo Alto Engineering Hub.”