Tesla CEO Elon Musk has a response for a California state lawmaker from San Diego following her blunt message to him on Twitter. Democratic Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez used profanity in response to Musk's threat to move his Freemont manufacturing plant to Texas or Nevada if the state doesn't relax COVID-19 restrictions and allow production to restart.
Musk replied via Twitter, "Message received." The heated exchange got started with a blog post by Musk, who said he was suing Alameda County after it allowed some manufacturing companies to resume operations, but kept his Tesla plant in the East Bay closed. The plant south of Oakland, employs more than 10,000 people.
Musk later sent out a late night email to his employees informing them of his intention to reopen the factory, but county health officials were quick to shutdown that idea. Alameda County Interim Health Officer Erica Pam responded, "We have not given the green light," in reference to the Tesla factory allowing workers to come back. The company must meet every condition of a Health Order issued on May 4th, insisted Pam on Friday. She also claimed that at that time, Tesla had not met those conditions, and would not be approved for reopening until proving that workers would be properly protected from the coronavirus and that resumption of production wouldn't mean a potential spread to the Bay Area as a whole.
"The unelected & ignorant ‘Interim Health Officer' of Alameda is acting contrary to the Governor, the President, our Constitutional freedoms & just plain common sense," Musk wrote in response. Musk also noted for his nearly 34 million Twitter followers that Tesla was "the last carmaker left in CA." He referred to Tesla's dispute with Alameda County, where Fremont is located, as "the final straw."
Gonzalez has since tweeted regret for the language used in her original social media post, and she suggested her emotional response was the result of the disproportionately high infection rate for the virus in the Latino community.
House of Representatives member Dan Crenshaw of Texas quickly involved in the Twitter exchange to promote his state as a the best option for Tesla to setup shop.
"The future is happening in Texas," tweeted the Republican congressman.
This is not the first time Musk has railed against the California response to the virus. He previously was critical of Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom's stay at home order.