Tesla's 'production hell' moment is about to repeat itself

Recently, billionaire and CEO of electric car company Tesla, Elon Musk warned Tesla workers to prepare for a challenging and harsh production ramp-up process, as he previewed the manufacturing plan for a promising new electric car for the mass market.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk warned that Tesla workers will have to sleep on production lines to build the new mass-market electric car. (Photo: Google)

Elon Musk said that Tesla's next-generation electric car will be a new affordable mass-market flagship electric vehicle, codenamed "Redwood," that will go into production in the second half of 2025 at the company's Texas Gigafactory, although it is not yet known how many such cars Tesla will initially produce.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk also said during the company’s latest earnings call that building Tesla’s next-generation electric car, which is expected to go into production in 2025, will require Tesla workers to live and sleep on the production line at the company’s Texas factory. “We really need workers on the line all the time,” Musk told investors. “The fact that we’re going to be sleeping on the production lines, that’s going to be a whole new level of manufacturing.”

“There’s a lot of new technology, a lot of new revolutionary manufacturing technology waiting here,” Musk added. “I’m confident that once it’s up and running, it’s going to be superior to any other manufacturing technology that exists anywhere in the world . It’s the next level,” he added. This means Tesla workers could be facing increasingly severe conditions in what Musk himself previously called “production hell” during Tesla’s 2017 Model 3 upgrade.

In fact, the billionaire has also been hinting for years that Tesla plans to launch a cheaper electric vehicle that is expected to cost less than $30,000. It comes as Tesla is under increasing pressure from Chinese EV makers that are prioritizing more affordable EVs, with Chinese EV maker BYD recently surpassing the US automaker to become the world's largest EV maker by the fourth quarter of 2023.

This isn’t the first time Tesla workers have had to sleep on production lines to meet the company’s production deadlines, however. A former worker at Tesla’s Fremont, California, factory told The Verge that employees would sleep on the factory floor after a 12-hour shift. Tesla CEO Elon Musk himself has said he slept under his desk while living in Tesla’s manufacturing facilities for three years straight.

HUYNH DUNG (Source: Businessinsider)

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