Tesla is pouring over $1 billion into its new “Gigafactory” in Austin, Texas.
Earlier this year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that the automaker would move its headquarters from California to Texas, largely because of housing affordability issues faced by employees.
According to CNBC’s review of Texas Department of Regulation filings:
Tesla plans to spend at least $1.06 billion on what the company calls a “Gigafactory” that will produce the company’s forthcoming electric pickup truck, Cybertruck, as well as Model 3 and Model Y vehicles.
The permits show that Tesla’s previously announced expansion next to the Colorado River remains on track to start producing vehicles in the near future and that the company is investing a substantial amount of capital at the 2,000-acre facility…
The Texas filings, dated Nov. 19, show that Tesla started construction in Sept. and Nov. 2020 on facilities intended for body work, stamping, casting, painting, and full vehicle assembly at the plant, which will have more than 4.2 million square feet of space.
CNBC added that Tesla also has factories in California, Nevada, and Shanghai; the firm is currently building a plant in Berlin.
As The Daily Wire previously reported, hundreds of thousands of residents are leaving California. In Texas, 82,235 people moved from California in the last year. In Arizona, there are 59,713 recent Californians; in Nevada, 47,322; in Washington, 46,791; and in Oregon, 37,927. Overall, more than 653,000 Californians left for another state in 2019 — outnumbering 480,000 new residents.
Gas prices in California have surged beyond $4.67 per gallon. In the Bay Area, prices exceed $4.85; in Northern California’s Humboldt County, the average price is $4.97.
The Bay Area is also dealing with an increase in mass robberies. Over the weekend, three stores in San Francisco were looted by mobs of thieves. At one Nordstrom store, eighty individuals, some of whom were equipped with ski masks, pepper spray, and crowbars, assaulted employees and carried away merchandise.
Some retailers are closing stores amid the crime wave. Walgreens, for instance, will shutter five locations this month.
“Organized retail crime continues to be a challenge facing retailers across San Francisco, and we are not immune to that,” said Walgreens spokesman Phil Caruso. “Retail theft across our San Francisco stores has continued to increase in the past few months to five times our chain average. During this time to help combat this issue, we increased our investments in security measures in stores across the city to 46 times our chain average in an effort to provide a safe environment.”
Best Buy chief executive Corie Barry is likewise worried that retail thefts in California will provoke employees to quit.
“When we talk about why there are so many people looking for other jobs or switching careers, this of course would be something that would play into my concerns for our people because, again, priority one is just human safety,” she told CNBC. “And it’s hard to deal with this potentially multiple times in one location.”