Texas is rolling out the mat for Tesla [1]. They will move faster on permitting and reviews. Tesla seems to be moving quickly with GF4 construction in Berlin [2], even with German labor laws (which is good! you still have to make sure labor regulation is adhered to). Texas is not California. The deadline is not set in stone; it is an aspirational goal to motivate.
Lots of oil and gas (O&G) construction/services folks looking for work right now in Texas [3], so it's a good time for Tesla to move in. Also, Texas has an abundance of cheap wind energy they can't export due to ERCOT interconnect capacity issues. The SpaceX McGregor engine development and static fire test facility is only 90 minutes north of Austin, and Tesla already has an Autopilot R&D office there for the engineers they hired from AMD. Good pick for the next factory. Maybe a SpaceX HQ relo is in future plans.
Hey, it's the guy who called Tesla a "good corporate citizen" just a few months ago. Let's add: breaking stay-at-home orders, called the US government "fascist" while praising China, hired people to hack the personal computers of a whistleblower (as reported in a recent deposition filing), extorted the California government, and forced their workers back to the factory floor amid the pandemic to the list of "good" things.
Still stand by what I said. COVID response by Alameda County was overblown (including extended stay at home orders), California chose not to provide $600k in training funding to SpaceX after Tesla and SpaceX have created tens of thousands of jobs in the state (because they're non-union shops), and Fremont is following rigorous guidelines to mitigate the threat of COVID infections on the factory floor. Your only legitimate complaint is pursuing a whistleblower (that's fair, and uncalled for on Tesla's part).
How unreasonable must your jurisdiction be before you're permitted to take your business elsewhere and it isn't slandered as "extortion"? OSHA regulations apply in all 50 states, and both taxes and land costs are legitimately lower in Texas. Is every other company that has moved out of California extortionist?
Being that Alameda County (and neighboring Santa Clara County) have the highest number of COVID cases in the Bay Area[1], I would argue that their response was not overblown and likely had numbers to back why they were being aggressive.
So now your argument is that Alameda County's health measures worked and we should listen to medical experts when it comes to infectious disease management. Seems like you're trying to have it both ways.
I don't get how you can think it is overblown. Is that just because you personally haven't gotten horribly sick or have someone you know died? We have over 100,000 deaths already and it is still rising, and is likely only a fraction of the real numbers since testing is still shitty and unavailable for the vast majority of people. Nursing homes near me have had literally 1/3 of their total occupancy die from covid.
If quarantine procedures are done correctly, the result should be nobody notices anything at all and they think it is overblown. But I don't think we are anywhere near that point right now even, it seems like denial to me to pretend like we aren't in the middle of a shit storm.
Lots of oil and gas (O&G) construction/services folks looking for work right now in Texas [3], so it's a good time for Tesla to move in. Also, Texas has an abundance of cheap wind energy they can't export due to ERCOT interconnect capacity issues. The SpaceX McGregor engine development and static fire test facility is only 90 minutes north of Austin, and Tesla already has an Autopilot R&D office there for the engineers they hired from AMD. Good pick for the next factory. Maybe a SpaceX HQ relo is in future plans.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-tesla-... (Musk, Texas governor talk about potential Tesla move to Lone Star state)
[2] https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-gigafactory-4-berlin-ground-...
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/business/energy-environme...