The https://www.tesla.com/contact page should have been updated at the same time as the shareholder meeting announcement as it states the HQ is still in CA.
Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin
251–260 of 691 posts
Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
One theory is that it's still legal to build new housing in Texas, so the Austin supply can increase to match the demand.
The traffic situation is already pretty bad in that area, seemingly deliberately so. That is the case even during the pandemic, I can only imagine how bad it is when _nobody_ is remote. It seems that progressive Austin wants everyone to move to the city and give up their cars, which is not a realistic thing to do for most people in TX because it's not built for such lifestyle. I have no other plausible explanation. S…
>I have no other plausible explanation.
Take a ton of people with CA urban ideology and plop them down in a random city in TX and "intentionally bad traffic because we expect everyone in the city to give up their cars" seems like a not unforseeable outcome.
Frankly this is why we leave major infrastructure planning up to the states so that the state can wring the best possible outcome out of an entire economic region without getting too bogged down by local politics. Left to their own devices cities would build shit infrastructure because they'd try to exclude the poors and other petty stuff like that.
Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not actually true - California will probably consider this California income because he earned it while in California.
Are you a tax lawyer by any chance? or is this just guessing?
I know people who have been harassed by CA franchise tax board many years after leaving the state, and had to prove they had left.
Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
I talked to several Tesla and former Tesla folks that will probably relocate because of this, and the say is that since Austin in less NIMBY than the Bay Area new housing will get built and prices will go down. It's a more complex bet than just "we move there because houses are affordable now".
I'm not sure why they think Austin is less NIMBY. That hasn't been my experience.
It may be as NIMBY in some ways but the effects haven't kicked in yet (and probably won't given size, competition, and property tax laws). Look at the options available for a family making 80k in these two cities. They aren't even the same magnitude.
https://www.trulia.com/TX/Austin/
https://www.trulia.com/CA/Palo_Alto/
Texas also doesnt have prop 13 so it is unlikely to ever reach the levels of a California city
Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
Austin already has plenty of homeless people, and the #s are quite comparable to san jose for example - they are just more visible in the bay area due to lax rules for them (plus weather).
> homeless people [...] are just more visible in the bay area due to lax rules for them I'm not normally someone who picks on phrasing, but this one is a little orwellian. The implication is that, while homelessness is endemic basically everywhere, the proper "rules" for them to obey are that they are not to be seen . And enforcement regimes that allow them to exist in public are "lax"? Yikes.
I feel like orwellian is the wrong term. Isn't that geared more towards the thought police and how you feel about the government's politics? Not if you're homeless or not?
I don't think OP meant anything by his post. California's policies are lax. Regardless if you think they're deserving of consideration or not, it's miserable to have a huge homeless population living next to your house. People may pretend its not real but homeless areas tend towards drugs and unsanitary conditions and it's not a great place to raise a family.
Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone who just bought a house in Austin this year, if the reason is "affordable housing", they're in for a world of hurt.
I mean are you seriously comparing affordability of Austin to the bay area? My sense is that you have only lived in Austin and thus don't know how squeezed things are in the bay area. Not trying to be rude but just trying to point out how much more affordable Austin is relative to the bay area.
Not even just the bay area but the whole coast.
Look at prices in Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, or out east. They all easily top Austin.
I think it's a good thing. Austin has a budding tech scene. Hopefully the political shitstorm there blows over so people actually want to live there.
Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone who just bought a house in Austin this year, if the reason is "affordable housing", they're in for a world of hurt.
Do you have any idea what housing costs in the bay area though? We can compare between the zipcodes of Gigafactory Texas and Fremont. According to Redfin the median sale price for 78725 (Austin) is $362k, compared to $1.225 million for 94538 (Fremont). That's more than 3x the price. Compared to California it's definitely affordable. Austin: https://www.redfin.com/zipcode/78725/housing-market Fremont: https://www.redf…
I mean, to be fair, 78725 is effectively the middle of nowhere in Austin. It makes sense if Musk's goal was to choose a fairly undeveloped exurb, but the gigafactory is as close to Manor and Webberville as it is to central Austin.
I know Fremont is suburban, but it's a well incorporated suburb to both SF, Oakland and San Jose. 78725 is on the opposite side of Austin from most of the fancy neighborhoods.
Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
Property taxes are _much_ higher in Texas than California, in fact Texas has one of the highest property taxes in the nation (because there's no income tax, and TX still needs to fund itself somehow; TX also has one of the highest sales taxes for this reason, too). You pay the same on property taxes for a $400k house in Texas as a $1M house in California. Not only that, CA has Prop 13: for better or worse, your prope…
I thought Prop 13 no longer applies to current purchases? If you own a house under prop 13 it’s under way low property tax, but if you sell it, it get reassessed at the new current value. Is this not the case? When we purchased our house years ago the taxes weren’t cheap and we had to pay the additional Melli-Roos tax.
Prop 13 still applies (though I personally think it inflates home prices in CA above their "true" market value and disincentivizes anyone from selling/moving).
When I bought my home this year, it got re-assessed at my purchase price, yes. But for as long as Prop 13 is the law of the land, no matter how much home prices in CA inflate, my property tax is more or less capped at the price I paid for the house.
Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin
#259Good. This will both alleviate pressure on the Bay Area as well as accelerating the political shift to the left in Texas. It's a win all around. I actually think that living in the Bay Area as a tech employee is increasingly unjustifiable from an ethical point-of-view. It was once the case where that was necessary for many career paths but that's increasingly not the case and the pandemic has hastened that shift. Why…
I agree with some of the points you've made in this thread but you cannot base a policy on unfounded anecdotes. I don't believe that Google allows any of its bus drivers to drive 10 hours per day, I don't believe it requires them to sit around unpaid every day, and of course, I don't believe this individual cannot find a bus driving job somewhere closer to where he or she lives. There has to be more to this story. To use it, unquestioned, to indict a company (and expanding that to indict the entire industry) is not valid.
Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
Article on the commute some Tesla workers make, getting up at 2:30am. https://www.protocol.com/silicon-valley-tech-shuttles
I temporarily lived out in Sacramento, and commuted occasionally to MP. This is not bad compared to some others, but seeing stationary brake lights getting on the highway at 4am was something else
I’m pretty sure if I moved out to Sacramento from where I am now (the South Bay) I’d try and take the Capitol Corridor in, if I could find any way to make the timing work. It’s not that I’d expect it to cut down on my commuting time, but I’d definitely want to test whether it could cut down on my commuting stress.
(Granted, these are pre-pandemic thoughts about moving.)