#Elon Musk has left California and moved to Texas

Silicon Valley ain’t booming like it used to be — and Elon Musk has gone to Texas. 

The eccentric tech tycoon, who in recent months has squabbled with California officials over coronavirus restrictions at Tesla’s electric-car factory, confirmed that he recently moved to the Lone Star State — and he blames the move on California.

“If a team has been winning for too long, they do tend to get a little complacent, a little entitled and then they don’t win the championship anymore,” Musk said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. “California has been winning for too long.”

The move comes less than six months after Tesla announced plans to build its next factory in the Austin area. 

Musk said that he has been planning to decamp from California for months. He publicly clashed with state officials who required Tesla’s Fremont gigafactory to close during the first wave of the pandemic in the spring, calling the state’s lockdowns “fascist.”

Palo Alto-based Tesla went as far as to defy lockdown orders, with Musk effectively daring local authorities to arrest him. The company also sued to block Alameda County from enforcing the order before officials agreed to let the plant reopen as long as it sufficiently protected workers from the virus.

The animosity with California grew so intense that Musk threatened to move Tesla out of the state, to either Nevada or Texas. But in his interview Musk stressed that the move was personal, and that it did not mean he was taking Tesla with him. 

“It’s worth noting that Tesla is the last car company still manufacturing cars in California,” Musk said. “There used to be over a dozen car plants in California, and California used to be the center of aerospace manufacturing. My companies are the last two left.”

Boring Company, the infrastructure firm that Musk also leads, revealed last month that it was also expanding into Texas, posting a number of Austin-based job listings. 

Musk in June sold his sprawling Los Angeles-area mansion for $29 million, and is asking for $9.5 million for a ranch-style home nearby that used to belong to “Willy Wonka” star Gene Wilder. 

Musk also has five other California properties on the market for nearly $100 million.