Elon Musk will sleep at Tesla factory to oversee Model 3 production
Tesla has lots and lots of cars to build so Elon Musk will be sleeping at his electric car factory.
That's what the Tesla CEO tweeted Monday after an Information article about his deeper involvement in Model 3 production went out.
Musk bristled at the premise of the story: That he was stepping in to oversee the electric sedan's production as senior VP of engineering Doug Field was being pushed out.
Musk insisted it's "better to divide & conquer, so I’m back to sleeping at factory." The billionaire noted, "Car biz is hell."
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At the end of a quick back-and-forth with the reporter Musk got a bit snippy, tweeting, "Uhh, hello, I need to build cars."
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He really does need to build cars. The Model 3 production has been worrying investors with an unverified memo showing 2,000 cars made per week. That's below a 2,500 cars per week goal for this time of year. Meanwhile, Tesla's dealing with a complaint about unfair labor practices from the National Labor Relations Board and the fallout from leaked emails asking employees to "prove a bunch of haters wrong" and volunteer to work on the Model 3 line during their time off.
Last year production goals fell far behind. At one point instead of a promised 1,500 Model 3s, only 260 were made. By the end of the year Tesla was supposed to be hitting 20,000 cars per month.
Moody's also downgraded Tesla's credit rating last month -- and a fatal crash in a Tesla Model X last month was revealed to be in Autopilot mode.
Looks like Musk isn't going to be doing much sleeping on factory floors or elsewhere.
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
