As quietly as one of its electric cars, Tesla Motors Inc. has become the biggest auto industry employer in California.

Tesla now employs more than 6,000 people in the state, the automaker said, offering the first public snapshot of its workforce this year. That moves the fast-growing company well ahead of Toyota Motor Corp., the world's biggest automaker, which has 5,300 direct employees in California — a count that will fall after the company said it will move a majority of those jobs to Texas by 2017.

Tesla will add at least 500 more workers by year's end in California, spokesman Simon Sproule said in an interview.