Elon Musk confirms he's moved to Texas after a months-long fight with California

• Elon Musk confirmed on Tuesday that he's moved to Texas.
• Earlier this year, he threatened to move Tesla out of California during a spat about the state's coronavirus restrictions.
• The move could save him lots of money on taxes.

After months of speculation, Elon Musk on Tuesday confirmed he has moved to Texas.

He made the announcement at a virtual conference hosted by The Wall Street Journal, while continuing to criticize his former home of California.

"Tesla and SpaceX obviously have mass operations in California," Musk told the paper's editor-in-chief, Matt Murray. "In fact, it's worth noting that Tesla is the last car company still manufacturing cars in California. Space X is the last aerospace company still doing significant manufacturing in California. 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."

"For myself, yes, I have moved to Texas," Musk continued. "We've got the Starship development here in South Texas where I am right now. We're hopefully going to do a launch later today. And then we've got big factory developments just outside of Austin for Giga Texas."

His move has been months in the making

Musk's divorce with California began largely this spring, when local coronavirus restrictions forced Tesla to temporarily close its only US car factory in the San Francisco Bay Area.

"Tesla will now move its HQ and future programs to Texas/Nevada immediately," he tweeted during a May disagreement with local health officials whose COVID-19 rules differed from state and national guidelines. "If we even retain Fremont manufacturing activity at all, it will be dependen (sic) on how Tesla is treated in the future."

And over the summer, after listing many of his Los Angeles-area homes for sale, Musk quietly moved his charitable foundation to Texas, public filings first spotted by Bloomberg this week show.

For Musk, Texas' lack of a state income tax is a clear incentive compared with California, which has the highest in the country. Musk's 2020 income is set to be just as large as his 2019 pay - the most of any CEO at just under $600 million - thanks to a series of stock-option awards unlocked by various corporate performance metrics. In total, they could reach more than $55 billion.