Literally just hours after Elon Musk got on stage at Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting, and reassured investors and the general public that he was confident the company could meet it’s 5,000 per week Model 3 production goal by the end of June, Business Insider released a report with a vastly different take.
According to the Springer-owned publication, new Model 3 production robots that had been expensively flown to Tesla headquarters in order to help with production are still in test mode and have not yet been put into operation. Tesla admits that the robots are not operational, but disputes the facts that a source gave BI.
Things with the new robots Tesla flew to its Nevada Gigafactory from Germany at the end of May are not going exactly as planned.
One massive machine meant to put together the modules that make up Tesla’s battery packs is still not fully operational. Tesla aimed to have the new machine up and running by this weekend, according to a source at the company who requested anonymity. Business Insider has also seen video of the dormant machine, and at the time of this article’s publication, it was still in test mode.
A spokesperson from Tesla told Business Insider confirmed that the robots are not yet operational, however, they disputed the idea that the robots were supposed to be up and running by Sunday.
This machine was part of a high stakes, rare and expensive aerial delivery by auto industry standards. Tesla had it delivered in an effort to achieve its goal of getting the Gigafactory to produce enough batteries to make 5,000 Model 3 cars a week by the end of June.
Musk said that the Gigafactory was currently only a one-third of its planned size and that once it was completed it would be the biggest factory in the world. “This one factory is making more batteries than all the other factories on Earth,” Musk said. “It’s like, epic. it’s like two hours to walk through everything.”
But by the end of the day on Wednesday, it hardly mattered. Elon Musk’s reassuring comments that all of Tesla’s problems were in the rear view mirror: about not needing a capital raise, being cash flow positive for Q3 and Q4 and being confident about meeting its Model 3 production targets already lit the fuse of a monster short squeeze that was Tesla shares up about 10% on the day.
And so, it’s once again “stormy weather in Shortsville“, at least the next lethal Tesla autopilot crash finally prompts the NTSB to force a recall of all Model 3s, S, X and what not currently on the road.
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