Tesla is outgrowing its Palo Alto headquarters and Musk says it looks like “crap”

We recently reported on Tesla being on a hiring spree, and now the Wall Street Journal corroborates the news with its own report this week. WSJ specified that the automaker is outgrowing its Palo Alto headquarters and it might be building a consolidated headquarters at an undetermined location in the near-future.

Earlier this year, we heard rumors that Tesla was moving its headquarters to the former Steelcase pyramid in Grand Rapids, Michigan after it was purchased by Roger Norman, the same person who helped broker Tesla’s Gigafactory deal in Nevada. But it later turned out to be the next data center for Switch, which also has a facility in the same industrial park as Tesla in Nevada.

Nonetheless, Tesla is outgrowing its headquarters. The company even has a valet service for employees since the small parking lot is often full.

WSJ’s report suggests that the company plans on relocating its headquarters, but in his biography published earlier this year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk was quoted saying he hoped to redesign the Palo Alto facility instead of relocating it.

He especially complained about the kitchen and said he hopes to add a restaurant:

“I think our Tesla headquarters looks like crap. We’re going to spruce things up. Not to sort of Google level. You have to be like making money hand over fist in order to be able to spend money the way that Google does. But we’re going to make our headquarters much nicer and put in a restaurant.”

Musk also commented on his more whimsical plans for the Tesla factory in Fremont:

“Everybody around here has slides in their lobbies. I’m actually wondering about putting in a roller coaster – like a functional  roller coaster at the factory in Fremont. You’d get in, and it would take you around the factory but also up and down. Who else has a roller coaster? I’m thinking about doing that with SpaceX too. That one might be even bigger sine SpaceX has like ten building now. It would probably be really expensive, but I like the idea of it.”

Tesla has now spread over eight buildings in the Bay Area, including the 500,000 square feet former solar panel manufacturing plant formerly owned by Solyndra, which fell into bankruptcy in 2011.

The company currently has over 14,000 workers and around 1,600 open positions on its website.