With over 6,000 direct employees now under Tesla’s Californian belt, the EV manufacturer is now the state’s top automotive employer, beating the 5,300 people that are currently working for Toyota.
The discrepancy between the two will continue to grow, as Tesla adds more and more jobs (an additional 500 by year’s end), while in contrast Toyota is already taking steps to move the majority of its production into its headquarters to Texas by 2017.
Apparently, Tesla has already surpassed other major tech companies in the area too – they employ twice the number of people that Twitter does, but are still around 1,000 off what Facebook employs statewide.
Bloomberg quotes Gino DiCaro, a spokesman for the California Manufacturers & Technology Association, who put it very plainly: “Tesla’s scaling up here in California is terrific news. It’s also an exception — and we certainly need more of them.”
By Andrei Nedelea
Ed. Note: A previous version of this article mistakenly reported that Toyota is transferring its production into Texas
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