Texas didn't ban direct sales of Tesla motors. Dealership directly owned by automakers are prohibited by an antiquated law. There was a law in the last legislative session which would have allowed Tesla to set up dealerships, but it never came up for debate. Texas' legislature only meets for 140 days each odd numbered year, but it's likely that in the next legislative session the bill will be passed.

And, you can still buy Tesla's in Texas (trust me, you see plenty in Austin and Houston). Tesla just can't open dealerships. They still have showrooms (I've been to one in Austin and one in Houston), they just can't sell the car there.

Texas didn't ban direct sales of Tesla motors, they just have a law banning direct sales of cars, such as those sold by Tesla motors.

Texas is right-to-work state. Musk is a smart guy.

...the likelihood that right-to-work played even the smallest role in Musk's decision making here is small enough that it appears in the occasional real analysis text.

good old ϵ...

So is Florida, but they would have had to build a new facility on protected land on Merritt Island.

You should pay a visit to SpaceX company. Union/non-union is a non-issue.

Edit: Come to think of it, Elon would be very very happy if rocket manufacturers really had to deal with union the way car/plane makers do. That would mean rocketing across space is really like getting on a jet liner. But we all know that's many years away.

So yeah, union/non-union is a non-issue for SpaceX.

Union/non-union may not seem like an issue inside SpaceX, but the view from other workers in the industry may not match that. Last month, I was at a 4th of July party which happened to be mostly space workers, and when I brought up the subject of SpaceX the consensus was, 'Cool company. I'd totally work there if the salaries weren't so low.' It surprised me, since I tend to associate up-and-coming companies with money from the Valley with higher salaries.

There are definitely unions in the aerospace industry. My uncle was involved with a strike at United Launch Alliance a few years ago. It's actually the only time I can remember any member of my family going on a picket line.

You definitely don't work at SpaceX for the money. Their salaries are below market rate, the hours are brutal, but you're bootstrapping planetary travel. Just depends on what your motivations as a person are.

Disclaimer: I applied for a low-paying SpaceX IT position in Cape Canaveral, because Mars.

Could you elaborate on what "the way" means? After all, there are such unions now, like the International Association of Machinist and Aerospace Workers. IAM represents employees at, among others, KSC. Eg, they voted to strike at KSC back in 2007. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06...

Ariane also has to deal with unions. You can see direct evidence at http://www.space.com/13037-ariane-5-launch-postponed-labor-s... .

(I mention these because strikes are easily reported in the news. Behind the scenes of course many of the engineers who built Ariane and the Shuttle are union labor, but that fact doesn't have the conflict that brings in readers.)

Since I don't see how union labor implies what you think it does, could you clarify?

Right-to-work or not is almost irrelevant for non-commodity labour anyway.

Texas actually had the ban on direct sales for quite a while now. It had nothing to do with Tesla. As a matter of fact, Perry has said that he would like to have it repealed.

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-Texas/2014/03/26/Gov-Perr...

Texas will probably lose the big battery plant to another state closer to California.

If he takes after Lockheed and the rest of the industry, he'll wrap his tentacles around at least a few states in order for them to shout when he says.

it's looking more and more like Reno is the location of the battery plant. The governor and Musk have both made statements recently about it and Tesla had something like 300 people working on something here. Work is currently stopped though so maybe the site isn't suitable or the state has done something stupid again.

I have seen more than a handful of stories that the Reno project was shutdown and a majority of construction workers laid off there due to how behind the project is (they were working 24/7 to get back on schedule).

I wasn't aware that work had resumed. It was just a few days ago that kolo reported the layoffs and shut down and I don't catch that very often. It'll be interesting to see if it's the plant or something else.

I've been seeing 3 large manufacturing buildings being constructed on highway 580 a mile away from the Tesla plant. I wonder if Musk is considering those as a possibility.

I don't believe work has stopped, and it is infact the battery plant. From what I have heard there are still a few states in the running.

In the last five days while I happened to catch the news on tv (I rarely watch it) they were reporting the workers had been laid off and work had been stopped. toomuchtodo above states that they are behind and trying to get caught back up so perhaps it was just temporary.