Elon Musk meets with California Gov. Newsom at Tesla’s engineering HQ

Tesla CEO Elon Musk and his staff members satisfied Wednesday with California Governor Gavin Newsom to tour Tesla’s new engineering headquarters.

Sources near to the governor informed CNBC the conference at Tesla’s engineering place of work in Palo Alto, California focused on the firm’s efforts to develop careers and grow in the condition.

The expansion will target on choosing engineers proficient in investigate advancement and artificial intelligence. Tesla is getting around the lease for the office environment house, earlier occupied by Hewlett-Packard. The plans will assist accelerate initiatives to deliver autonomous driving and robot engineering.

“This was HP’s unique headquarters, and so I assume it really is a poetic transition from the founders of Silicon Valley to Tesla and we are extremely enthusiastic to make this our global engineering headquarters,” Musk instructed CNBC. “And we’re a California-Texas firm.”

Tesla initiated the assembly soon after various preceding tries to set up talks in between the state’s most properly-acknowledged politician and the most outspoken billionaire failed to materialize.

Musk stated the new facility is “correctly a headquarters of Tesla” and that it is “form of a twin-headquartered corporation.” Tesla’s major headquarters is in Austin, Texas.

It comes as Tesla faces regulatory scrutiny in the point out. The California Section of Motor Autos has formally accused Tesla of engaging in deceptive internet marketing and promotion techniques in which its driver aid applications, model-named Autopilot and Full Self-Diving, are concerned. And the state’s civil legal rights company has sued Tesla alleging racist harassment of, and discrimination in opposition to, Black employees that has persisted for several years at the company’s automobile assembly plant and other amenities in California.

In the meantime, according to Tesla’s most recent yearly financial submitting with the SEC, district lawyers in various California counties are “conducting an investigation into Tesla’s waste segregation tactics,” for harmful waste-connected code violations.

Tesla did not immediately answer to a request for comment.

California and its potent local climate initiatives have been integral to Tesla’s achievements. California leads the nation’s zero-emission auto sector with approximately 1.4 million ZEVs marketed and it is household to 55 ZEV-related producing firms.

But Musk’s sights on California have not been so friendly when it arrives to his organization.

As the pandemic hit in March 2020, Musk and condition officers clashed in excess of reopening the Tesla plant in Fremont, California. At the time, Musk was pushing for his workers to return to function though covid was affecting enterprises across the country. Musk characterized California’s wellness-linked covid constraints as “fascist.”

In 2021, following repeated threats to leave the state, Musk moved Tesla’s headquarters to Austin, Texas. The organization owns and operates two factories in Fremont and Lathrop, Texas.

Musk talked with CNBC about his present-day ideas on California.

“I consider California should be cautious about taxes and in excess of laws heading also significantly,” he reported. “Objectively, Tesla has done absolutely nothing but increase its footprint in California. Both in terms of producing and engineering and personnel. Every single yr we have grown our headcount in California without exception.”

Considering the fact that then, Musk has produced his political stance apparent, characterizing California as a a single-bash condition that is burdened with overregulation and significant taxes. In spite of individuals opinions, Governor Newsom has praised Musk in a number of interviews with CNBC, calling him “one particular of the biggest innovators of our time.”

Musk, in the meantime, has emphasized that Tesla is continue to a significant employer in the condition and is expanding its operations. In the fourth quarter of 2022, for example, Tesla boasted about a new Megapack factory in Lathrop, California.

“I’m not anti-California,” he advised CNBC. “Just one has to strike a balance and say you can find a great deal of good matters about California and there are some challenges. California could make it simpler to do production but we stimulate legislators to consider their actions extensive-term.”

Tesla mentioned it had 47,000 staff in California in 2022, in accordance to a January 2023 web site put up. As of Dec. 31, 2022, the corporation and its subsidiaries had 127,855 workers all over the world. The organization claimed its wages resulted in $16.6 billion in financial exercise for the point out “or $44.4 million injected into California’s economic system every single working day.”

CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.