Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe only Musk is moving to Texas, not Telsa. Thought at this point they are basically one in the same.

He's opening new Tesla facilities in Texas, but currently he hasn't formally announced he's completely pulling operations out of Texas, although he's threatened to in the past.

He made some very suggestive comments last week about Tesla being the last manufacturer of cars in CA.

I might add, the size of the Austin gigafactory is larger than the size of all Tesla factories in the world combined [1].

I will leave you to do the math if Tesla leaving CA isn't a possibility.

[1] https://electrek.co/2020/07/30/tesla-gigafactory-texas-crazy...

That size comparison doesn't actually show a comparison. It only has the footprints for the other factories, and the entirety of the land purchase for the texas factory. What a bizarre thing!

If you look at the planning documents you'll see that the planned footprint for the texas factory is probably a similar size to the plans for the rest of their "giga" factories. https://electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2020/09/Tesla...

It explains the footprints in the article. They're largely not usable, whereas the Austin one is.

These are manufacturing jobs. It is not exactly like California has a better environment for that than Texas.

Your second statement struck me, and I was curious how the manufacturing sectors compare for California vs Texas.

Numbers from the National Association of Manufacturers:

California: $316.7b manufacturing output, 10.67% of state product, 7.72% of employment. [1]

Texas: $230.45b manufacturing output, 12.98% of state product, 7.04% of employment. [2]

So really, it doesn't seem like one state is particularly better than the other for manufacturing by the numbers.

1: https://www.nam.org/state-manufacturing-data/2019-california...

2: https://www.nam.org/state-manufacturing-data/2019-texas-manu...

> Your second statement struck me, and I was curious how the manufacturing sectors compare for California vs Texas.

And Wall Street was great in New York until they moved to Florida, North Carolina, and Hawaii... and Oil headquarters were huge in California until they moved to Texas... and Big Auto was big in Michigan until they moved to the South and on and on.

What is so mind-boggling about all these people not seeing the trends is acting like what is is what has to be. There's no divine right for these companies to remain in California. It has a terrible business climate. Were it not for oil, agriculture, and defense in parts of CA the Bay Area loathes, there would be very little actual "stuff" produced in California. Software has no geographic attachment to the land like ag or oil, so there's no reason they have to be forced to the Central Valley. They can just leave.

Tesla is building factories in Texas. Long term Texas makes more sense for manufacturing as there are established supply chains there.

You also probably have tons of cheap flat land that is ideal for manufacturing? So that would seem to make sense.

The Midwest has that too. But it also has unions. :)

It's also a lot further away from the Mexico border, where an awful lot of car parts are manufactured. A whole lot of those parts are already flowing through TX as it is, easier to dip into the existing streams than build new supply chains.

Also a lot of bigger, tech friendly cities -- Dallas, Austin, and Houston is poised to overtake Chicago as the 3rd largest city in the US within a decade or two.

Kanasas may be similar in terms of taxes and political climate (unions) but all its really got going for it is empty space. Ditto for much of the rest of the Midwest.

Going to Mars? Or running to Mars?