Tesla's will expand engineering offices in California over a year after moving HQ to Texas

Elon Musk (pictured right) and Gov. Gavin Newsom (pictured left) haven’t always seen eye-to-eye. Musk threatened to pull
Tesla’s entire operations out of California in 2020.
Associated Press

Elon Musk announced on Wednesday that Tesla plans to expand its engineering headquarters in California.
The company is taking over Hewlett Packard’s office space in Palo Alto.
Tesla moved the company’s headquarters to Texas in 2021, but still employs thousands of workers in California.

Elon Musk announced during a press briefing with California Gov. Gavin Newsom that the electric-car maker plans to expand its engineering headquarters in California.

The Tesla CEO said the company is moving into office space in Palo Alto that was previously occupied by Hewlett Packard. He said the move will allow the company to work more on its plans for autonomous driving and robotics. CNBC reported that the site has been dubbed “HQ2,” citing sources familiar with the plans.

Musk called the move a “poetic transition from the company that founded Silicon Valley to Tesla.” The electric-car maker originally signed a lease for about half of HP’s former office space in 2021, according to a report from Reuters at the time.

“I couldn’t be more proud of California’s committement to supporting Tesla,” Newsom said, adding that he’s worked with Musk for decades and even bought one of the carmaker’s first Roadsters.

The announcement comes less than two years after Musk moved Tesla’s headquarters to Austin, Texas. At the time, the billionaire said he’d moved Tesla’s main headquarters because it has grown difficult for employees to afford houses in the Bay Area, though he said Tesla planned to continue to expand its presence in California.

Musk and Newsom have been at odds in the past. In 2020, the billionaire threatened to pull all of Tesla’s operations out of California because he disagreed with the state’s response to the pandemic, including its shelter-in-place orders.

The state has also launched a series of regulatory probes regarding Tesla’s treatment of its workers, as well as its marketing of its self-driving technology. Last year, a California regulator sued Tesla, alleging racial discrimination at the Fremont Factory based on “hundreds of complaints from workers.” More recently, the California Department of Motor Vehicles accused the company of intentionally misleading customers in the advertising for its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving features.

Despite the move to Texas, the carmaker continued to produce many of its cars at the Factory in Fremont, California and it still maintains its previous company headquarters in Palo Alto. As of January, Tesla employs about 47,000 workers in California.

Spokespeople for Musk and Tesla did not respond to a request for comment from Insider.

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