crowd that sees ultra-wealthy techno-elite CEOs
as a menace to society will hate it.”
Within California, where Tesla was born,
Musk has had a long history and in some
ways personifies the Silicon Valley ethos of
innovation, starting with electric car designs
and later moving into building rocket ships
with his company SpaceX. When he opened the
Fremont plant in 2010 at a recently shuttered
factory that was jointly run by General Motors
and Toyota, Musk was embraced with open
arms by another California legend, then-Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The relationship has been fruitful for Tesla,
netting Musk hundreds of millions in subsidies,
including nine years of sales tax exemptions
totaling nearly $250 million.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, a former San Francisco
mayor, said he has a long relationship with
Musk, noting that the state has “substantively
supported” Tesla for many years. He anticipated
the relationship would continue.
But Tesla’s reopening flies in the face of
Newsom’s statewide order, which allows
counties to begin reopening if they meet
benchmarks including testing capacity,
hospitalizations and contact tracing. Alameda
County is behind on several, including
completing fewer than 30 tests per day per
100,000 people; Newsom’s order requires
counties to hit 200 tests per day.
There are more than 2,100 cases in Alameda
County and 74 deaths, putting the county’s
infection rate at nearly 130 cases per 100,
population — lower than California’s average,
but higher than several other Bay Area counties.