Elon Tries to Rally
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has urged employees to “rally” in some leaked emails addressing the sub-par second quarter the EV company suffered through this year.
The emails - which also praise the Fremont factory for producing a record number of vehicles - read very much like a pep talk, starting off with a poetic interpretation of Tesla’s work, and reinforcing Musk’s respect for his workers.
The emails continue:
“This has been a very tough quarter, primarily due to supply chain and production challenges in China, so we need to rally hard to recover!
I’d like to congratulate the Fremont team for achieving a new all-time record production day last week and Berlin for making almost 1000 cars last week! This is great stuff.
Shanghai is returning to full strength and Austin is spooling up. Onward to victory!”
But although it’s true that Tesla has had a rough second quarter, it’s a little confusing to think that there’s more room for employees of the EV company to rally any more than they have.
GigaBerlin had a slow start due to regulatory hoops it needed to jump through, but they’re already up to producing almost 1000 Model Ys, and are hiring more shift workers.
GigaShanghai is almost up to full capacity again and implementing shifts that allow the factory to operate 24hrs a day; after several shutdowns, supply chain issues and workers sleeping on the factory floor to avoid more COVID-related shutdowns.
GigaTexas is also “spooling up” as Elon himself puts it.
Production numbers have massively declined across the industry of course, and Tesla is easily one of the best performing EV companies currently. As the pandemic continues to cause shortages and supply issues, it’s likely things will continue to progress slowly. And that’s no one’s fault.
So, yes, things aren’t going as well as Tesla execs were likely hoping; but considering the feats Tesla workers have been performing to keep production rolling, it seems Elon didn’t need to tell his workers to rally. They were waaaay ahead of him. Elon’s sentiments about the importance of the work at Tesla seem to be echoed in the hard-working employees, churning out high numbers of vehicles despite a difficult situation.
“Onward to Victory” indeed.