Tesla is now the biggest auto-industry employer in California, topping Toyota with more than 6,000 employees in the state.
Toyota currently employs 5,300 people in California, a number that will be reduced soon after the planned move to Texas by 2017, and the difference will also grow once Tesla adds 500 more workers this year, Bloomberg reported.
Worldwide, Tesla had 5,800 employees worldwide at the end of last year. Its headcount compares to Twitter, which has about 3,000 employees, and Facebook, which has around 7,000.
The electric car company continues to boost production in California despite the state's relatively expensive costs for labor and energy.
"It's poorly understood how much Tesla has invested in the state of California," Diarmuid O'Connell, Tesla's vice president for business development, told Bloomberg, and "how much it's added in just the past 18 months."
Manufacturers like Toyota have been wooed by lower costs and few environmental guidelines to shift to other states.
"Tesla's scaling up here in California is terrific news," Gino DiCaro, spokesman for the California Manufacturers & Technology Association, told Bloomberg. "It's also an exception--and we certainly need more of them."
The company doesn't plan to stop growing. The next big step is to build a $5 billion "gigafactory" that will be the world's biggest producer of lithium-ion batteries.
Tesla could break ground for the new plant as soon as June and is reportedly looking at Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and Texas as options. The company plans to begin the $5 billion process at two different sites to make sure everything is in place.
The new plant is expected to employ 6,500 workers, making it a boon to whichever state becomes its location. While the groundbreaking is expected to begin soon, Tesla still hasn't named the winning spot.
Along with the gigafactory and expanded production, Tesla is also looking to launch the new Model X electric car in the second quarter of 2015.
See Now: OnePlus 6: How Different Will It Be From OnePlus 5?
