Musk calls the Tesla factory in Berlin “a huge money incinerator”
“That’s a bunch of problems Musk is facing right now”
According to CEO Elon Musk, Tesla’s new electric car factories in Grünheide near Berlin and Austin in the US state of Texas are currently losing billions of dollars. Automotive industry expert Ferdinand Dudenhöffer explains in the WELT interview what problems the Tesla boss is currently experiencing.
Tesla boss raises the alarm: according to Elon Musk, the new Tesla factories in Grünheide and Texas are currently losing billions of production costs. The Brandenburg plant is only doing slightly better for a reason.
D.According to Elon Musk, the new Tesla Inc. plants in Germany and Texas will lose “billions of dollars” by increasing production.
“The factories in Berlin and Austin are both huge money incinerators right now,” the Tesla boss said in a May 31 video interview that the Tesla Owners of Silicon Valley customer association posted online Wednesday.
“It’s really like a giant roar, this sound of burning money.” In Texas, only a small number of cars would roll off the assembly line right now.
There are difficulties in increasing production of the new 4680 batteries, and the tools to make the traditional 2170 batteries are “locked in a port in China,” Musk said. The Grünheide factory is in a “slightly better position” because the traditional 2170 batteries were installed right from the start.
A “supply chain disruption nightmare”
Musk just announced austerity measures that will come with job cuts.
The job cuts will affect about 10% of the company’s permanent employees or about 3.5% of the global workforce within the next three months, Musk told the Qatar Economic Forum on Tuesday.
In recent years, Tesla has been building new plants in various locations around the world to make distribution in its largest markets cheaper. More factories also give Tesla a higher limit on the number of cars the company can build per year.
In Shanghai, meanwhile, Tesla is struggling with lockdowns to contain the crown. These are “very, very difficult, to say the least,” Musk said.
“The past two years have been a real nightmare of supply chain disruptions, one after another,” Musk said. “And we’re not out of the woods yet. Our biggest concern is how to keep factories running so we can pay our workers and not go bankrupt.”
