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Late last year, Elon Musk kissed California goodbye. Tesla’s chief executive sold his Bel-Air mansions and said he moved to Texas. But if he also threatened to shut down the electric carmaker’s California plant in Fremont, those threats now sound like swagger.
The company recently applied for permits from city authorities to transform an assembly line that now runs through an outer tent into a permanent structure. This would expand the current plant by 64,000 square feet, although it is not clear whether this would increase production capacity.
News of the permit application was first reported by online news publication Teslarati. Although the permit application indicates a commitment to the site, there can be no assurance that the project will be completed. It is also not clear whether the build would reduce the current production of the Model 3 and Model Y, which now crosses the tent. Tesla also builds Model X and Model S cars in Fremont. Tesla did not respond to requests for comment and does not have a media relations department.
Musk’s threats to leave California carried weight given Tesla’s massive push to increase production elsewhere. It already operates another factory in Shanghai, and major new factories are currently under construction in Austin, Texas, and near Berlin.
Musk first threatened to shut down Fremont in May, when the plant was ordered to shut down by Alameda County health officials as the COVID-19 pandemic began to spread in the United States. defied orders and reopened the factory, urging officials to stop it.
The Alameda County public health official at the time, Erica Pan, relented and allowed the plant to remain open. (Pan was later appointed state epidemiologist by Governor Gavin Newsom.)
Several months later, Musk reiterated his threat to shut down Fremont in an interview with Automotive News. When he announced he was personally moving from California to Texas in December, shortly followed by announcements that Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Oracle were moving to the Lone Star State, it fueled debate within the industry. technology on whether California was welcoming enough for business and whether Austin or another city could recreate Silicon Valley’s success with start-ups.
Still, there is no indication that Musk is seriously considering moving Tesla’s headquarters to Palo Alto or the Hawthorne headquarters of his rocket company, SpaceX.
Whether Tesla will sell enough vehicles to justify all of its new factories remains to be seen. The company sold around 500,000 cars last year at its factories in Fremont and Shanghai. The company said it was able to build 500,000 from the Fremont plant alone.
The Berlin plant experienced many delays, even as Tesla’s sales in Europe declined, falling 10% in 2020, according to Schmidt Automotive Research. The company’s electric car market share in Europe fell from first to third place, behind Volkswagen and Renault.
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