Bay Area Council Statement on Threat by Tesla CEO Elon Musk to Relocate Company over COVID-19 Restrictions

The Bay Area Council today (May 9) issued the following statement in response to tweets by Tesla CEO Elon Musk threatening a lawsuit against Alameda County for not allowing the electric car manufacturer to resume operations and vowing to move both the company’s Palo Alto headquarters and possibly its Fremont facility out of California. The decision by Alameda County health officials comes after California on Friday moved to Stage 2 in allowing more businesses, including manufacturers, to reopen according to public health guidelines for workplaces designed to protect against the spread of COVID-19.

“California and the Bay Area are demonstrating every day that we can protect public health and reopen our economy at the same time,” said Jim Wunderman, President and CEO of the Bay Area Council. “We strongly urge Alameda County public health officials to work with Tesla and other employers in figuring out a plan that can allow them to safely resume operations sooner rather than later. We must send a strong signal to businesses and the millions of workers who have lost their jobs that the Bay Area and California are just as eager to restart our economy and get people back to work as we are to stamp out this pandemic. The economic pain from this shutdown is historic, profound and intense, and is taking a huge toll on state and local government budgets that is going to reverberate for years to come. California has already signaled by moving to Stage 2 that the difficult actions we’ve taken to combat COVID-19 are working, and we’re confident that Alameda County can follow the same path.”