According to the Wall Street Journal’s Mike Ramsey, Tesla now offers a valet service at its Palo Alto headquarters because there are simply not enough parking spaces left there.
That probably means employees bring their cars to work but get them parked at an offsite location by a third party valet service, the way some of the valet service apps like Luxe or Zirx work.
In any case, it’s a reflection of Tesla’s rapid expansion and how its recent hiring spree is causing the company to outgrow its current office space.
According to the report, Tesla’s total headcount went from just 899 in 2010 to 14,000 now. It currently has 1,600 open positions and it plans to add another 4,500 employees in California alone over the next four years, it said.
In order to use space more efficiently, Tesla has moved some of its office and engineering workers to its nearby Fremont factory, but that may not be enough.
Tesla already has 8 different facilities in the Bay Area, but Tesla CEO Elon Musk has expressed his interest in building a larger, consolidated headquarters in California soon, according to the report.
The rapid expansion is partly due to increased competition in the electric car market and rising pressure from other tech companies rumored to be working on their own autonomous cars, a space Tesla may want to get into as well.
And don’t expect its employee ramp up to slow down anytime soon. The first photos of Tesla’s Gigafactory were released Monday, and it looks like there’s going to be a lot of positions to fill there — it’s the world’s second-largest building by volume, and three times the size of New York’s Central Park.
Read the full WSJ report here>>
This article was originally published on Business Insider. Copyright 2015.
