The Tulsa World recently reported that electric car maker Tesla is choosing between Austin, TX and Tulsa as the home for its new truck factory. Here are the details:
Tesla has picked Austin, Texas, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, as finalists for its new U.S. assembly plant, a person briefed on the matter said Friday.
The person says company officials visited Tulsa in the past week and were shown two sites.
It wasn’t clear if any other finalists were in the mix. The person didn’t want to be identified because the site selection process is secret.
That's cool. Although the news was probably leaked by Tesla in an effort to get both cities and states to toss more public subsidies their way, it's cool that Tulsa is even being considered for this honor. Oklahoma could use all the non-oil patch related jobs it can get! Plus, it would be awesome, in a poetic irony sense, to have the world's premier electric auto car company manufacture its trucks in the former oil capital of the world.
The Tulsa Ruling Class must be aware of this, too. In a shameless, desperate attempt to woo – or possibly even creep out – the company, they have doctored up one of the town's most famous monuments – the 75-foot tall Golden Driller – to make it resemble Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
Check it out:
Once again, I think it's great that Tesla is using Tulsa to get a better bid from Austin. Who knows? Maybe this haymaker will actually work and we'll see Hipster Boo Boo and Grimes racing concept vehicles up and down the Turner Turnpike, but doesn't this feel a tiny bit desperate? It seems like all the time and energy spent to deface this statue would have been better spent making Tulsa look like it has a larger airport, or doctoring statistics so Tesla will think Oklahoma has en educated enough workforce to staff the factory.
It also sets a bad precedent. Let's pray to Oral Roberts giants hands (I can't wait to see what Tulsa does with that one) that Facebook doesn't consider moving any of its operations to Oklahoma City, or Mayor Holt may stick Zuckerbird's paper mache head on the Milk Bottle Building, and then tweet selfies from it every day.
That being said, we wish Tulsa the best of luck in getting Tesla, and can't see what desperate thing they do next. I'd suggest just renaming the town Tesla. You just need to swap the "s" and "l" and replace the "e" with a "u." It wouldn't be that difficult.
