At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Tesla closed the Fremont Factory in March 2020 due to California state and Alameda county COVID restrictions.[71] When California lifted restrictions, but the county did not, Tesla sued the county, and restarted production on May 11, 2020.[72] The county lifted restrictions on May 13, 2020, and Tesla dropped its lawsuit.[73] After the dispute with county officials, on December 1, 2021, Tesla moved its legal headquarters to Gigafactory Texas.[74][75] However, Tesla continued to use its former headquarters building in Palo Alto, and over the next two years significantly expanded its footprint in California. The company opened its Megafactory to build Megapack batteries in Lathrop, California in 2022,[76] and announced in February 2023 that it would establish a large global engineering headquarters in Palo Alto, moving into a corporate campus once owned by Hewlett Packard.[77]
Tesla became a major investor in bitcoin, acquiring $1.5 billion of the cryptocurrency,[78] and on March 24, 2021, the company started accepting bitcoin as a form of payment for US vehicle purchases.[79] However, after 49 days, the company ended bitcoin payments over concerns that the production of bitcoin was contributing to the consumption of fossil fuels, against the company's mission of encouraging the transition to sustainable energy.[80] After the announcement, the price of bitcoin dropped around 12%.[81] In July 2022 it was reported that Tesla had sold about 75% of its bitcoin holdings at a loss, citing that the cryptocurrency was hurting the company's profitability.[82]