Tesla defends its impact on California as Musk alienates blue states
Tesla released a new blog post defending its impact on California and says that it now employs 47,000 people in the state.
California has been critical to Tesla’s success over the last 20 years.
The state has helped Tesla in its time of need and its strong climate initiatives and EV incentives have made it the biggest market for electric vehicles in the US and, therefore, Tesla’s biggest market.
However, the love story between Tesla and California ended somewhat abruptly in 2020. Early measures to curb the spread of Covid 19 resulted in Tesla having to close its Fremont factory, which angered CEO Elon Musk to the point of threatening to move Tesla from California.
By 2021, Tesla delivered on the threat and moved its headquarters to Texas.
The automaker always maintained that it is still heavily investing in California and walked back threats made by Musk to even move Fremont factory at one point.
But the behavior of Musk over the last year resulted in Tesla’s popularity in what is still its most important US market plummeting.
Since Tesla’s move to Texas, the CEO has made it clear that he is now Republican and even encouraged people to vote Republican during the last election – a rare thing for a tech CEO to officially take a side like that.
This didn’t help Tesla’s case in blue states, like California. On top of it, Musk called the Democratic party “the party of hate” and he regularly makes negative comments on the left on his popular Twitter page.
In an apparent damage control effort, Tesla released a rare blog post defending its impact on the state of California.
In the post, the company listed all its primary operations in the state:
Tesla’s footprint in California is made up of Megapack production and vehicle castings in Lathrop, hardware and software engineering in Palo Alto, vehicle and battery manufacturing in Fremont, battery development and testing in San Diego and vehicle design in Hawthorne.
Tesla listed some of its economic impacts in the state of California based on IHS research:
- Tesla-supported California jobs (direct and indirect) exceeded 80,000 in 2021. Over 43,000 of these stemmed from $1.6 billion in expenditures with California suppliers.
- For every 100 direct Tesla jobs, 50 more were supported in the supply chain and 68 by follow-on consumer activity.
- From 2018 to 2021, Tesla paid an average of $1 billion in federal, state and local taxes annually, with approximately $400 million going toward state and local taxes in 2021.
- Tesla’s average contribution to the gross state product (GSP) rose by 42% between 2018-2021, while the state’s GSP grew by 16%.
- Wages from Tesla and Tesla-connected jobs resulted in $16.6 billion in economic activity, or $44.4 million injected into California’s economy each day.
Tesla confirmed that it now has 47,000 employees in California:
In 2022, we grew to 47,000 employees (direct employment) in California, and our production footprint continued to increase as our 2 millionth vehicle rolled off the lines in Fremont. Since 2016, we have made over $5 billion in capital investments in our facilities. We are confident that these trends will continue and that 2023 will be an even bigger year for Tesla in California.
That’s just a little less than half of its global workforce still being located in California.
Electrek’s Take
Despite Tesla not having an official PR department anymore, I’ve seen an effort lately for the automaker to have more of its own communications directly with the public lately and not just through Elon Musk’s Twitter.
Since dissolving Tesla’s PR department, Musk made it so everything goes through him and that has become a problem lately as he increasingly antagonizes part of the population in the US.
When you lead a company that sells products and services to consumers, it’s just bad business to become publicly political like Musk has been doing over the last year.
It looks like Tesla is trying to have its own voice again with being more active on social media and now some blog posts like this one.
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EQORE, a distributed battery storage startup based in Somerville, Massachusetts, has raised $1.7 million in seed funding to help industrial buildings tackle rising electricity costs. The round was oversubscribed and includes backing from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC), Henry Ford III of Ford Motor Company, and Jonathan Kraft of The Kraft Group.
The timing couldn’t be more relevant. Data centers are booming, and that demand is slamming an already stressed grid. Big, utility-scale batteries help at the grid level, but they can’t fix the bottlenecks happening on local distribution networks. That’s where onsite storage steps in — storing energy when demand is low and discharging it when demand spikes, which helps stabilize costs for both the grid and the businesses using it.
MassCEC’s head of investments, Susan Stewart, said, “What excites us the most about EQORE’s technology is the dual impact: grid support and customer savings.” She noted that commercial and industrial buildings are ideal hosts for battery storage, but haven’t gotten much attention until now. “EQORE is closing that gap.”
Investor Randolph Mann highlighted what makes the company stand out: “By uniting advanced controls with high‑resolution metering and true end‑to‑end service, EQORE finally makes commercial behind-the-meter storage effortless and financially compelling for businesses.”
EQORE comes out of MIT’s Sandbox program and delta v accelerator and is currently part of the Harvard Climate Entrepreneurs Circle incubator. CEO and cofounder Valeriia Tyshchenko, a third‑generation engineer from Ukraine and MIT graduate, said the new funding will help the company scale alongside its existing revenue.
With the seed round closed, EQORE plans to grow its team and ramp up battery deployments at energy-intensive manufacturing facilities. The company doesn’t just install batteries; it operates them. Its autonomous software shifts when a facility uses power based on market conditions and utility incentives, reshaping load in real-time without disrupting operations.
Read more: Battery boom: 5.6 GW of US energy storage added in Q2
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![Check out Hyundai's cool new off-road electric SUV concept [Images]](https://i0.wp.com/electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2025/11/Hyundai-off-road-SUV.jpeg?resize=1200,628&quality=82&strip=all&ssl=1)
Hyundai took the sheets of its new off-road electric SUV, the Crater Concept, at the LA Auto Show. Here’s our first look at the compact off-roader.
Meet Hyundai’s new off-road SUV, the Crater Concept
We knew it was coming after Hyundai teased the off-road SUV earlier this week, hidden under a drape. Hyundai took the sheets off the Crater Concept at the LA Auto Show on Thursday, giving us our first real look at the rugged off-roader.
Hyundai refers to it as a compact off-road SUV that’s inspired by extreme events. The concept was brought to life at the Hyundai America Technical Center in Irvine, California.
The off-road SUV draws design elements from Hyundai’s Extra Rugged Terrain (XRT) models, such as the IONIQ 5 XRT, Santa Cruz XRT, and the new Pallisade XRT Pro.
Although it’s a concept, Hyundai said the Crater Concept is a testament to its commitment to designing future XRT vehicles that are more functional, more capable, and more emotional.
“CRATER began with a question: ‘What does freedom look like?’ This vehicle stands as our answer,” Hyundai’s global design boss, SangYup Lee said.
The off-road SUV features Hyundai’s new Art of Steel design theme, first showcased on the THREE concept at the Munich Motor Show in September.
Hyundai said the design team was guided by one clear goal: To create a rugged and capable vehicle that’s designed to go anywhere. The Crater Concept embodies that vision with added wide skid plates, 33″ off-road tires, limb risers, rocker panels, and a roof platform.
Hyundai designed the interior for “tech-savvy adventure seekers,” with a singular design centered around a high-brow crash pad that stretches across the dashboard.
The concept also swaps the traditional infotainment setup for a head-up display that spans the entire front window, which Hyundai said includes a live rearview camera.
Hyundai’s off-roader includes a new Off-Road Controller for front and rear locking differentials, as well as a terrain selector with modes including Sand, Snow, and Mud. Other off-road features include downhill brake control, trailer brake control, a compass, and an altimeter.
Although Hyundai said it was electric, it didn’t reveal any further details about the powertrain. The off-road SUV could be a battery-electric or fuel-cell-electric vehicle.
Like the new Nexo, Hyundai’s hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, the concept features “HTWO” lamps exclusive to its FCEVs.
Earlier this week, the design team at Hyundai Design North America also introduced its new design and ideation studio codenamed “The Sandbox.” The creative design studio is set to serve as a global hub for future XRT vehicles and gear.
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OpenAI is partnering with Taiwan’s Foxconn, the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer, to design and build artificial intelligence data center components in the U.S., the AI startup’s latest announcement tied to its massive infrastructure development plans.
While no financial terms were disclosed, OpenAI said in Thursday’s announcement that it will have early access to evaluate the systems Foxconn produces, and the option to purchase them. The companies said the goal is to accelerate the deployment of infrastructure while securing long-term U.S. capacity.
Under the agreement, OpenAI and Foxconn will co-develop multiple generations of AI servers in parallel, while manufacturing core components like power, networking, and cooling systems at Foxconn’s U.S. facilities. The company’s website says it has factories in Wisconsin, Ohio, Texas, Virginia and Indiana.
“This partnership is a step toward ensuring the core technologies of the AI era are built here,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a statement, calling AI infrastructure a “generational opportunity to reindustrialize America.”
OpenAI has been on a dealmaking blitz of late with many of the world’s largest technology companies, and has announced spending commitments of roughly $1.4 trillion, raising concerns about whether the startup will ever generate enough profit to justify those investments. Altman said earlier this month that the company will hit $20 billion in annualized revenue by the end of this year and hundreds of billions by 2030.
Prior deals include a $100 billion announced — but unfinalized — agreement with Nvidia for the chipmaker to invest in OpenAI in phases as the company builds out infrastructure. OpenAI also has cloud partnerships with Microsoft, Google and Amazon and hefty compute buildout commitments with Oracle.
Foxconn adds a manufacturing layer, further localizing OpenAI’s supply chain and potentially speeding the pace of deployment. The company is best known for assembling Apple’s iPhones but has expanded into AI and automotive manufacturing. It builds server racks tailored for AI workloads and is a key global supplier to Nvidia, the dominant player in high-end AI chips.
“Foxconn is uniquely positioned to support OpenAI’s mission with trusted, scalable infrastructure,” said Chairman Young Liu.
But the company has a checkered history in the U.S. In 2018, Foxconn broke ground on what was supposed to be a massive factory in Wisconsin for making flat-panel displays. That project was a failure, and is now the site of an AI data center being built by Microsoft.
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