“Billionaires going to Mars” has recently been in the news. But, I wanted to talk about something more grounded on earth — real estate and Tesla moving out of California.
Elon Musk recently announced that he is leaving California — selling his “last remaining house” in the state (most likely his $35m estate in Hillsborough).
This move goes part of the way on his speculative course of selling all of his houses to fund a colony on Mars. He must have broken many a architects’ hearts when he apparently said on a podcast:
“Taking the time to build a house, even if it is a really cool house, is not a good use of time compared to developing the rockets to go to Mars and help pay for sustainable energy.”
Compare this goal of building a Mars colony to the Blue Origins dream and the Bezos Brothers who are merely going on a trip to Mars.
Anyway, on this blog, I have commented quite a few times on people often confusing Musk and Tesla. To understand Tesla only through Elon Musk’s persona is a kind of parallax error.
Musk, with his 420 references, Dogecoin, and Science Fiction tweets, is uh… complicated, often trying to play the billionaire playboy reincarnation of Tony Stark. Analyzing Tesla is a far simpler task within my limited expertise. Tesla is a great product and a good example of a high-quality EV that has moved the auto industry forward on this front. It is also a perfect archetype of a product that can be successfully produced to scale in the United States. Tesla is of the shining examples of bringing auto production back to America. Of course, there are many things that can be improved about Tesla production — in Operations, we believe in continuous improvement — but the progress of operations in the firm has been steady.
For years now, Musk has often raised the possibility of Tesla leaving California. I wrote at length on this blog that Tesla moving out (See “Tesla Moving out of California?” on the history of the Fremont plant) as an unlikely event given (i) the huge labor market supply of both engineers and production workers, and (ii) building operational capacity is hard work.
Now Musk has moved out of California — maybe to Austin. I am glad that he didn’t go to the new “tech hotbed”, Miami. However, in my view, Tesla production will remain for a foreseeable future in California.
If you have a large, rich family, there is ‘a special place’ in California for you to buy. I don’t expect any commission for this free tip. You are welcome.