Drama in Silicon Valley. On the occasion of a loooongue interview – more than four hours – granted to the YouTube channel Tesla Owners Silicon Valley, Elon Musk expanded on various subjects. Twitter, memes, politics in the United States, religion, even, and of course… Tesla. In the third part – “bonus” – of this interview, the CEO of the electric car firm split revelations on the state of the new factories. And they are not famous.
Tesla’s last two “gigafactories,” based in Austin, Texas, and Berlin, Germany, aren’t bringing in much. On the contrary, they would have become a “money pit”. The billionaire, violently ending a burst of collective laughter, advances: “Right now Berlin and Austin are losing billions of dollars.”
The fault is the shortage of the 4680, a whole new generation of batteries necessary for the operation of electric vehicles, and imbroglios in the supply chain: delays in the shipment of materials from Chinese ports. The richest man in the world said he was worried about the future of the factories, wondering how to keep them running without going bankrupt.
Last week, Elon Musk had already announced that he wanted to reduce the workforce of Tesla by 10%, recalls Business Insider. As early as 2021, he had complained about these delays “super crazy” in Tesla’s production line. “The demand for our cars is extremely high and the waiting list is long”he warned the Qatar Economic Forum. “It’s not intentional, and we’re ramping up production capacity as fast as man is capable of.”
In total, Tesla now has six “giga-factories” around the world: four in the United States, one in China, one in Canada, and the most recent in Berlin-Brandenburg.
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