As the Shanghai region of China enters its third week of restrictive shutdown in the wake of a COVID-19 resurgence, Tesla Inc TSLA has offered no update on the resumption of manufacturing from its Shanghai facility, nor has it provided any word on what it is doing to assist the thousands of individuals in its local workforce.
The New COVID-19 Emergency: The Tesla factory — along with the Shanghai region as a whole — was brought to a virtual standstill on March 28 when a government-ordered lockdown all but imprisoned the local population in their homes. Reports have surfaced from Shanghai of residents struggling desperately to secure food and medicine deliveries.
Earlier this week, health authorities in Shanghai announced more than 23,000 new daily infections were recorded. The Chinese government has given no indication of when the lockdowns would be eased, and reports have surfaced from Shanghai of residents struggling desperately to secure food deliveries. The U.S. State Department has told the non-emergency staff of its Shanghai consulate and their families to leave the city.
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Tesla’s Silence: As of last November, Tesla had a 15,000-member workforce in Shanghai, and the company planned to add another 4,000 positions following the upgrading of its production facilities scheduled for completion this month. It is not certain what, if anything, the company is doing to help its employees during this crisis.
While Tesla rarely issues press releases outside of its earnings reports, its CEO Elon Musk has been uncharacteristically quiet since last weekend’s news that he would not be joining the board of directors at Twitter Inc TWTR. Musk has not tweeted since April 10, with a now-deleted emoji response to the news of his declining the Twitter board seat.
The China plant turns out Tesla’s Model 3 and Model Y electric vehicles, with the vast majority of its output delivered to the Chinese market. In its most recent earnings report, the company cited the plant as being among its four key facilities.
“We aim to increase our production as quickly as we can, not only through ramping production at new factories in Austin and Berlin, but also by maximizing output from our established factories in Fremont and Shanghai,” Tesla said. “We believe competitiveness in the EV market will be determined by the ability to add capacity across the supply chain and ramp production.”
However, the Austin and Berlin plants are only now coming online, which leaves the Fremont plant carrying the bulk of the manufacturing burden.
Photo: OnInnovation / Flickr Creative Commons
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