Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the company’s new car factories in Texas and Berlin are facing challenges due to battery shortages and port problems in China, according to an interview published Wednesday. Difficulty ramping up production and is currently losing billions of dollars.
On May 31, Musk said in an interview with Tesla’s officially recognized “Tesla Owners of Silicon Valley” club in Austin, Texas: “Berlin and Austin’s factories are huge now. The ‘money burner’. They’re really making a huge roar, that’s the sound of money burning.”
The Tesla Silicon Valley Owners Club divided its interview with Musk into three parts, the last of which was published on Wednesday. Musk said in the interview that Tesla is making a small number of cars at its Texas factory because of challenges in ramping up production of its new 4680 cells and because of problems at Chinese ports, its traditional 2170 cells are also stuck. predicament. “This will all be resolved quickly, but it will require a lot of attention,” he said.
Tesla’s Berlin plant is in slightly better condition, he said, because the company started production there using conventional 2170 cells. Musk said the Covid-19 outbreak had previously caused a “very difficult” situation in Shanghai, where production was shut down. The shutdown has affected not only car production at Tesla’s Shanghai plant, but also at its California plant, which uses some auto parts made in China, he said.
According to a leaked internal memo, Tesla plans to suspend most production at its Shanghai plant for the first two weeks of July in order to upgrade the plant to boost output.
“The last two years have been an absolute supply chain disruption nightmare, one thing after another, and we’re not out of the woods yet,” Musk said.
Tesla’s biggest concern, he said, is “how do we keep the factory running so we can pay our employees and not go bankrupt.”
Earlier this month, Musk said he had a “super bad feeling” about the current state of the economy and said Tesla needed to cut about 10% of its workforce and “suspend all hiring around the world.” Earlier this week, he said Tesla would cut 10% of its workforce in three months.
Tesla’s Berlin and Texas plants, which began production earlier this year, are critical to the electric car maker’s growth ambitions. Musk said he expects Tesla to start production of the delayed Cybertruck electric pickup in mid-2023.
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