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In Tesla’s New Engineering Headquarters, Elon Musk Meets With California Governor Newsom To Explore A Possible Expansion

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, will meet with California Governor Gavin Newsom on Wednesday and give him a tour of the company’s new technical headquarters. The meeting at Tesla’s engineering office in Palo Alto, California, which is being nicknamed HQ2, is anticipated to center on the company’s attempts to expand and generate jobs in the state, according to sources close to the governor, CNBC said.

Engineers skilled in artificial intelligence and research and development will be the main focus of the expansion. Hewlett-lease Packard’s on the office building will be taken up by Tesla. The strategies will hasten attempts to develop robot and autonomous vehicle technologies.

According to sources, Musk set up the meeting after numerous prior attempts to arrange a meeting between the most well-known politician in the state and the most outspoken billionaire failed to go as planned.

It happens at a time when Tesla is under state regulatory investigation. The California Department of Motor Vehicles has officially charged Tesla with using misleading marketing and advertising techniques in relation to its driver assistance programs, dubbed Full Self-Diving and Autopilot, respectively. Also, the state’s civil rights department has filed a lawsuit against Tesla, alleging that the company’s car assembly facility and other sites in California have long harbored racist harassment and discrimination against Black employees.

District attorneys in various California counties are “doing an investigation into Tesla’s waste segregation processes” for violations of hazardous waste-related code, according to Tesla’s most recent annual financial statement with the SEC.

A request for comment from Tesla was not immediately complied with.

Tesla’s success has been largely attributed to California and its aggressive environment policies. Since 2009, the state has invested more than $3.2 billion in Tesla, according to the governor’s office. California has sold approximately 1.4 million zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) and is home to 55 ZEV-related manufacturing businesses, making it the nation’s market leader.

However, when it comes to his business, Musk’s opinions on California have not been all that favorable.

Musk and state officials fought over the reopening of the Tesla plant in Fremont, California, as the pandemic broke out in March 2020. While COVID was hitting businesses all throughout the nation at the time, Musk was urging his employees to report to work. Musk incorrectly called the health-related COVID regulations in California “fascist.”

Musk relocated Tesla’s corporate headquarters to Austin, Texas, in 2021 after making repeated threats to quit the region. At Fremont and Lathrop, Texas, the firm owns and runs two Megafactories.

Since then, Musk has made it obvious what side of the political aisle he is on, branding California as a one-party state with excessive regulations and high taxes. Notwithstanding these remarks, Governor Newsom has lauded Musk and referred to him as “one of the greatest inventors of our time” in numerous talks with CNBC.

Tesla is still a significant employer in the state and is growing its operations, according to Musk. For instance, Tesla bragged about a new Megapack facility in Lathrop, California, in the fourth quarter of 2022.

In 2022, Tesla claimed to have 47,000 workers in California, according to a blog post from January 2023. The corporation and its subsidiaries employed 127,855 people globally as of December 31, 2022. According to the business, the state of California received $16.6 billion in economic activity as a result of employee wages, or $44.4 million every day.

Source (CNBC)

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