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San Francisco Is Quickly Becoming the New Motor City

If you're the owner of a large plot of land in San Francisco's Bay Area that could be of use to a company developing an autonomous car, you might find Google, Apple or any of the important car manufacturers ringing at your door tomorrow morning.
San Francisco Bay 1 photo
Photo: Paul.h via wikipedia.org
Then again, if you owned that kind of land, chances are somebody already bought it from you a long time ago. That somebody might be Hudson Pacific Properties Inc., one of the biggest landlords in Silicon Valley. Victor Coleman, the company's CEO, talked about the automotive industry's growing interest towards the area traditionally linked with the biggest names in technology.

The big names currently competing in the race for the best autonomous car solution are all looking to buy or lease large pieces of real estate in the San Francisco Bay Area. The growing importance of self-driving vehicles (which was rather self-imposed by the automakers) means that the Silicon Valley has now gained a pivotal role for some of the car manufacturers of this world. Technology in its purest sense and passenger cars are closer than ever, and San Francisco landlords are the unexpected beneficiaries of this trend.

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal on the matter, Victor Coleman said, “We’re seeing the Toyotas of the world, the Teslas of the world, BMWs, Mercedes. Ford now is out in the marketplace looking for space. I haven’t even mentioned the 400,000 square feet that Google’s looking to take down and the 800,000 square feet that Apple’s looking to take down for their autonomous cars as well.”

Indeed, the Silicon Valley might end up gaining another prime material added to its name that's relevant to the car industry, as more and more of its efforts seem to go in that direction. And this shift couldn't have come at a better time for the real estate owners in that area, as the stability of the tech sector seemed to be shaky lately. Now, with plenty of interest and cash from the world of automobiles, it appears that business might be booming once again.

So even though they're not looking into building assembly plants in California, lots of car makers are renting offices there to use for their self-driving vehicle R&D teams, as well as land to test their creations. The tech industry might have simmered its explosive expansion, but it is now receiving help from the world of car making. Well, it's more a case of one hand washing the other, really.
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About the author: Vlad Mitrache
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"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie)
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