Musk And Newsom Discuss Expansion At Tesla's Engineering Headquarters

Tesla CEO Elon Musk and his staff are in California on Wednesday to attend a meeting with California Governor Gavin Newsom and tour Tesla's new engineering headquarters. In a report by Trade Algo, sources close to the governor said the meeting at Tesla's engineering office in Palo Alto, California, which is being dubbed HQ2, is expected to focus on the company's efforts to expand and create jobs in the state in the coming years.

‍

During the expansion, the company will focus on hiring engineers who have experience in research and development, as well as artificial intelligence. The office space occupied by Hewlett-Packard has been leased out to Tesla, which will take over the lease for that building. As a result of these plans, efforts to produce autonomous driving technology and robots will be accelerated.

‍

According to sources, Musk initiated the meeting after several previous attempts to arrange talks between the state's most prominent politician and the most prominent billionaire failed.

‍

The news comes at a time when Tesla is facing regulatory scrutiny in the state. There has been a formal complaint filed by the California Department of Motor Vehicles accusing Tesla of engaging in deceptive marketing and advertising practices in relation to its driver assistance programs, which are known as Autopilot and Full Self-Driving. As part of its investigation into the company's car assembly plant and other facilities in California, the state's civil rights agency has filed a suit against it alleging racist harassment of, and discrimination against, Black workers that has persisted for years at the company's assembly plant.

‍

Nonetheless, according to Tesla's most recent annual financial filing with the SEC, district attorneys in a number of California counties are currently investigating Tesla's waste segregation practices, for potential code violations relating to hazardous waste.

‍

In response to a request for comment, Tesla did not respond immediately.

‍

Tesla's success is directly related to California's climate initiatives. There has been over $3.2 billion invested in Tesla by the state since 2009, according to the governor's office. Nearly 1.4 million zero-emission vehicles have been sold in California since 2010, and 55 ZEV-related manufacturing companies are based here. California leads the nation in the sale of zero-emission vehicles.

‍

The business environment in California hasn't been friendly to Musk's company when it comes to his views on the state.

‍

Musk and state officials clashed during the outbreak of the pandemic in March 2020 over the reopening of the Tesla plant in Fremont, California, during the outbreak of the pandemic. During this time, Musk was pushing the return to work of his employees at the same time that covid was affecting businesses across the country. The Californian health-related covid restrictions are mischaracterized by Musk as "fascist."

‍

Musk moved Tesla's headquarters to Austin, Texas, in 2021 after repeatedly threatening to leave the state. There are two Megafactories owned by the company in Fremont, Texas, and Lathrop, Texas, which are operated by the company.

‍

Since then, Elon Musk has made it clear how he feels about California's political climate, characterizing it as a one-party state with overregulation and high taxes as well as being a one-party political system. Governor Newsom has repeatedly praised Musk, calling him "one of the greatest innovators of our time," despite the fact that he made these comments in multiple interviews with Trade Algo.

‍

Nevertheless, Musk has stressed that Tesla is still one of the largest employers in the state and it is expanding its operations in the state. As an example, Tesla boasted that there would be a new Megapack factory built in Lathrop, California in the fourth quarter of 2022.

‍

According to a blog post published in January 2023 by Tesla, it had 47,000 employees in California as of 2022. There were 127,855 employees worldwide working for the company and its subsidiaries as of Dec. 31, 2022. As a result of its wages, the company claimed that California's economy received $16.6 billion in economic activity "or $44.4 million every day that was injected into the state's economy by the company.".

‍