Just to be clear, we will be continuing to expand our activities in California….This is not a matter of sort of Tesla leaving California.

Elon Musk

This I completely agree. It’s hard to just leave California with so many employees here and they have their lives rooted to California. Their kids have schools in California and moving means restarting for some employees. This reminded me of Oracle moving their HQ to Austin, Texas. It really don’t matter as their Redwood City Campus is still hiring. Don’t underestimate network effects.

From the outside, the announcement tended to be viewed in the context of Musk’s repeated grousing about California business regulation — especially attempts by local officials in Alameda County to force Tesla’s Fremont auto plant to comply with anti-pandemic measures last year.

That wasn’t the case from the inside. The lone rationale Musk gave during Tesla’s annual meeting Thursday was different. There, he cited the high cost of housing and the long commutes burdening Tesla employees. In any event, the headquarters relocation wasn’t entirely news: Musk first announced his intention to move Tesla’s headquarters out of California in May 2020, in the teeth of his fight with Alameda County.

At that time he also threatened to shut down the Fremont plant, “dependen[t] on how Tesla is treated in the future.”In the fullness of time, the threat to Fremont turned out to be a bluff. At the annual meeting Thursday, he stated that Tesla’s “intention is to actually increase output from Fremont,” along with that of the company’s battery plant in Nevada, by 50%.

LA Times