In 2020, Travis County, Texas, promised Tesla a wonderful treat: 20 years of tax rebates for the company’s massive Texas Gigafactory, which was yet to be built there at the time. Presently, that rebate is under review, according to the Austin American-Statesman, because Tesla is allegedly not handing over certain data it originally agreed to provide.
Travis County is the county that includes Austin, and if you can cast your mind back to 2020, you may be able to recall some of the context for this. CEO Elon Musk was angry at the existence of Covid-era restrictions in Alameda County in California’s Bay Area, where his Fremont Tesla plant was located. “If we even retain Fremont manufacturing activity at all, it will be dependent on how Tesla is treated in the future,” he tweeted in May of that year.
For the record, yes, he did keep the Fremont factory open, but two months after that threat, he announced he was building a Texas Gigafactory. Then that December, he moved Tesla HQ, and himself to the Austin area. He moved the legal base of Tesla to Texas in 2024. And now Tesla is truly a Texas-based company—with Musk slowly moving his whole portfolio of companies there too…