Jefferson: Musk has his reasons for moving Tesla to Texas, but guvs culture war isnt one of them – San Antonio Express-News

Gov. Greg Abbott showed a lot of restraint when Elon Musk announced that Tesla would move its headquarters from Palo Alto, Calif., to Austin.

Abbott could have portrayed Musks decision as an endorsement of the radical direction he and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick are taking Texas.

They and Republican state lawmakers have been busy scapegoating undocumented immigrants and transsexual Texans, warring with the states big cities, effectively banning abortion, fighting face-mask mandates, blocking businesses from requiring their workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and suppressing minorities access to the ballot.

Abbott had used Musk as a political sock puppet before, telling CNBC on Sept. 2 that Musk was just fine with the states social policies.

But the governor went low-key, blandly addressing the electric-car maker in a tweet: The Lone Star State is the land of opportunity and innovation. Welcome.

Not even a swipe at California.

Its as if Musk had asked Abbott in advance of his Oct. 7 announcement at Teslas annual shareholders meeting not to plunge him once again into the Texas GOPs culture-war mongering.

On ExpressNews.com: Elon Musk announces Tesla moving its headquarters from California to Texas

Whatever his reason, Im glad Abbott didnt bend it to his political agenda because what Musk, the second-richest person on the Forbes 400 list, is doing in Texas will outlast this shameful period in our states history.

Lets return to Tesla, which is building a $1.1 billion factory in Austin to manufacture Cybertrucks.

Before the companys arrival, the state was already playing a strong hand in the automotive industry. A chain of plants and supplier networks stretches from North Texas to northern Mexico. The links include the General Motors assembly facility in Arlington, Toyotas South San Antonio pickup plant and Caterpillars Seguin operation, which manufactures engine blocks and heads for earth movers.

Navistar International will join the automotive corridor when it opens its $250 million heavy-duty truck plant, paint and body shops and a logistics center on the South Side next year. The facility will be capable of assembling both diesel and all-electric trucks.

And dont forget San Antonios nonprofit Southwest Research Institute, whose automotive engineering division conducts cutting-edge research for car and truck manufacturers.

Love him or hate him, Musk commands attention, and so does Tesla. Having its headquarters in Austin will only raise Texas profile in the industry, which is breaking quickly to the manufacture of electric cars and trucks due in part to Teslas influence.

And then theres SpaceX.

Musks money launched Tesla in 2003. But Martin Eberhard, who made a fortune from the sale of his eBook development firm NuvoMedia Inc. in 2000, conceived and founded the company in Palo Alto. Musks unquestioned dominance over Teslas development came later.

Not so with SpaceX. That was his brainchild, and he built it from nothing.

His immediate goal was to build rockets that could put satellites into orbit at a lower cost than any of his competitors and to capitalize on the death of NASAs Space Shuttle program. Early on, company executives said their aspiration was to become the Southwest Airlines of Space, Ashlee Vance reported in his 2015 book Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX and the Quest for a Fantastic Future.

Musks long-term goal was, and remains, grander: to build a rocket powerful enough to reach Mars, opening the red planet for colonization.

Musk arrived in Texas in late 2002 when his then-tiny company took over an engine testing site in McGregor, near Waco, according to former Houston Chronicle reporter Eric Bergers recently published book Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX. Beal Aerospace, founded by Dallas banker Andrew Beal, had blasted its engines at the facility before going out of business in 2000.

Twelve years later, SpaceX began building its spaceport and rocket production facility in Boca Chica, close to Brownsville. As originally planned, it was to serve as the launch site for SpaceXs Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. But plans changed and the budding spaceports sole focus is now the next-generation Starship.

As we reported earlier this year, SpaceX is not a great neighbor in South Texas.

On ExpressNews.com: This is not SpaceX property - this is my property: SpaceX looks to recast South Texas town as Starbase

It closes public roadways more than allowed by the federal government, frequently cutting off access to Boca Chica Beach. And a Starship explosion on March 30 damaged the fragile ecosystem near the site.

As Express-News contributor Richard Webner wrote: Thousands of hunks of twisted metal, and whatever remained of the liquid oxygen and methane in the rockets tanks, plummeted onto the federally protected wetlands, tidal flats, coastal prairie and sand dunes that surround the launch site, home to endangered species of birds, sea turtles and wild cats.

Musk has earned many of his detractors. He relentlessly hypes Tesla and SpaceX, and his tech-bro antics on Twitter are grating.

Theres this, too: both of his companies owe their existence largely to government subsidies, loans and contracts. Based in Hawthorne, Calif., SpaceX might not have survived without a key NASA contract in 2006 that Musk elbowed his way into.

Describing its importance to the company, Berger wrote: The contract value of $278 million would allow Musk to accelerate his plans to build the big orbital rocket, and ensure the companys future while his team worked out its problems with the Falcon 1 vehicle ... Perhaps most significant, with the contract award NASA had endorsed the company.

Yet, for all the caveats about Musk and his companies, the fact remains hes a visionary and an innovator.

He made out nicely in the 2002 sale of PayPal, which he co-founded with Peter Thiel, now a venture capitalist and the public face of the otherwise shadowy data analytics firm Palantir. EBay bought PayPal for $1.5 billion and Musk enjoyed a $180 million payday.

He soon committed $100 million of his payout to launching SpaceX. Tesla ate up most of the rest.

Tell me that didnt take guts and fidelity to two sweeping visions.

Musk is reviving our long-dormant excitement about space exploration. And hes making Texas a power center in the private-sector space industry.

Hes also making the mass production of electric vehicles a reality, lessening our dependence on fossil fuel. And hes now planting Tesla firmly in Texas.

All of which makes his apparent partnership with Gov. Abbott a mystery.

We dont know what the long-term fallout of Abbott and companys authoritarian turn will be for the states economy. But we do know that their vision for Texas is rooted in resentment and fear mostly of white Texans losing their political and cultural preeminence, outpaced by the explosive growth of minority populations.

So the question is, How long can a pearls-clutching, backward-looking state claim to welcome and foster innovation, as Abbott did in his Tesla tweet last week?

What drives genuine innovators like Musk are the twin beliefs that the future can be better than the present and that they can help make it so. Theyre optimists with plans.

Musk may have a lot of reasons for moving Teslas headquarters to Austin, including freedom from a state income tax. But Abbotts haunted, pessimistic politics isnt one of them.

greg.jefferson@express-news.net

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Jefferson: Musk has his reasons for moving Tesla to Texas, but guvs culture war isnt one of them - San Antonio Express-News