Tesla
Elon Musk looks tired. There are bags under his eyes and an embattled admittance of disappointment has replaced the billionaire entrepreneur’s typical exuberance. A big, yellow strapline reads "PRODUCTION HELL" and CBS This Morning co-host Gayle King appears surprised as Musk agrees with every one of her questions that suggests Tesla hasn't been performing as well as it should.
During the eight-minute exclusive tour of his enormous Giga Factory in Silicon Valley, Musk is asked why it's producing just 2,000 Model 3s a week, as opposed to the 5,000 a week he promised at launch. He simply nods and admits: "I need to work out how we can be better and get better at meeting goals.”
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Fair enough. But he then goes on to point out the conference room he sleeps in overnight while he sorts out the myriad issues facing the company. A billionaire business owner sleeping on a sofa above a factory floor: admirable behaviour or a sign of desperation?
It looks like investors haven't been too impressed by Tesla's recent performance, either. In late March, the company's share prince plunged after it announced a voluntary recall of 123,000 Model S vehicles. On Tuesday April 17, the company's share price continued to wobble after it said it would temporarily halt production of its mid-priced, mass produced Model 3 to "address bottlenecks" in its production line.
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"Our Model 3 production plan includes periods of planned downtime in both Fremont and Gigafactory 1," a Tesla spokesperson said at the time. "These periods are used to improve automation and systematically address bottlenecks in order to increase production rates. This is not unusual and is in fact common in production ramps like this.”
However, the latest closure makes it the second temporary shut down since February, and although, as previously stated, this is nothing completely new in the automotive industry, it is yet another black mark on a company that has been under fire for production, quality and autonomous driving issues since its very first car.
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"It was always a huge task to scale up from being a low-volume producer of luxury cars to a big player in the mass-market electric vehicle sector,” explains David Bailey, an expert on economic restructuring and industrial policy at Aston Business School in Birmingham.
“Tesla has been a pioneer in technology and a trailblazer in the electric vehicle market, but it has limited knowledge in the manufacturing process, and to go it alone could spell trouble for the company. The Model 3 is potentially a make or break scenario for Tesla, and if it can't prove to its investors that it can scale up and make significant profit, it could spell bad news,” he adds.
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Aside from production mishaps, the list of fires Tesla is currently putting out continues to grow, with the company defending its position after a recent fatality involving its Autopilot semi-autonomous driving features – the second death surrounding this technology in recent years following a crash in May 2016 involving a Model S.
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On top of this, Musk is addressing build quality issues that have been raised by customers and critics, with the likes of JD Power, one of the most influential consumer guides in the world, complaining of faulty door handles and excessive body panel gaps.
Plus, recent allegations raised by Reveal and The Center for Investigative Reporting claim that Musk's company concealed the true number of workplace injuries at its Fremont, California assembly plant in an attempt to put a positive spin on safety numbers and divert some of the negative press surrounding the company.
But as the fire continues to spread, the entrepreneur is seemingly employing the tactic of giving as good as he gets, branding Reveal an “extremist organisation” that “harassed” his workers by “phone or social media or even in the parking lot of the factory” in a statement on the company's blog.
Musk also reportedly yelled "shame" at a group of journalists on a conference call that dared to allege recent performance-related firings of hundreds of employees was to "disrupt possible unionisation efforts".
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His blustering, almost Trump-like reactions on social media speak volumes of the gulf that separates Tesla and the more established automakers of this world.
Instead of engaging in online social disputes or writing ranting blogs on the company