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Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk on Monday vowed to reopen the company’s Silicon Valley car-making plant in defiance of the local coronavirus shutdown order.
Health authorities in Alameda County, one of the six San Francisco Bay Area counties under a regional shelter-in-place order set to expire May 31, have said that Tesla’s TSLA, -0.99% factory in Fremont does not meet their criteria to reopen and that their more stringent order prevails over the state’s.
A spokesperson with the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office declined to comment on Monday, and neither Tesla nor the Fremont Police Department immediately responded to requests for comment.
Musk and Tesla are “putting major pressure on Alameda County” to reopen the factory and “Musk is not just talking the talk but walking the walk,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in a note Monday.
Musk tweeted Saturday that he will move Tesla’s factory and headquarters out of California, and hours later Tesla made good on his threat to sue Alameda County, calling the local shutdown order a “power grab.” and seeking an injunction to reopen the plant.
Moving away from the California car-making factory would take at least 12 months to 18 months “and could add risk to the manufacturing and logistics process in the meantime,” Ives said.
“In a nutshell, this is a game of high stakes poker and Musk just showed his cards; now all eyes move to the response from Alameda County and potentially California state officials over the next 24 hours,” he said.
On a blog post titled “Getting Back to Work,” Tesla on Saturday said it was preparing to resume operations with certain modifications in place and saying it had shared the plan with local authorities. Fremont and Tesla’s battery factory in New York state have been shuttered since late March.
Musk has railed against shutdown orders on Twitter and, more unusually, during a conference call with analysts to discuss Tesla’s first-quarter results last month. At the time, Musk called the orders, put in place to stem the spread of the coronavirus, “fascist.”
Local health authorities on Friday foiled Tesla’s plans to start reopening the factory, saying that their own shutdown orders trumped the fact that some nonessential businesses are reopening elsewhere in the state.
Tesla shares have gained 239% in the past 12 months, compared with gains around 1.7% for the S&P 500 index. SPX, +0.01%
