On Thursday, Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, said that the electric automaker wants to relocate its headquarters from Palo Alto, California, to Austin, Texas, where it has been constructing a large vehicle and batteries campus. During the industry’s annual meeting in the Texas auto plant, Musk said, “I’m happy to announce that we’re moving our headquarters to Austin, Texas.”
“This isn’t about Tesla sort of abandoning California,” he added. Adding that the company aims to increase output at its primary California and Nevada factories by 50%. Despite this, he added that the plant in Fremont, California, is “clogged,” and it is difficult for people to buy homes in California.
Elon Musk relocated to Texas from California in December to work on Tesla and its new plant in the state and his SpaceX rocket firm, which has a launch facility near the state’s southern corner. Musk had a volatile relationship with California at times, proposing to relocate Tesla’s headquarters and highly expressed to Texas during a dispute over the shutdown of Tesla’s Fremont facility due to COVID-19. He displayed a model of what seemed to be a cowboy-style belt buckle inscribed with “Don’t Mess with T.”
The T is in the pattern of the Tesla logo at the conference. Don’t Mess with Texas, a historic and popular Texas anti-littering program, inspired the slogan. Activist shareholders and a proxy advice firm criticized the board, but shareholders followed board recommendations on numerous major initiatives. Investors re-elected Elon Musk’s brother, Kimbal Musk, and James Murdoch towards the board of directors.
Tesla investors were advised not to re-elect the two directors by the advisory company Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) due to concerns about excessive remuneration packages for non-executive board members. A stockholder resolution calling for a study of the impact of Tesla’s use of arbitrators on workplace harassment and discrimination was also defeated. Ever since a former contract worker won a $137 million jury verdict against Tesla for workplace racism on Monday, the plan, which was opposed by the board, was thrust into the limelight.
