Tesla Inc temporarily halted some production at its auto assembly plant in California because of problems with its supply chain, but work has begun to resume, CEO Elon Musk told employees in an e-mail on Thursday.
“We are experiencing some parts supply issues, so took the opportunity to bring Fremont production down for a few days to do equipment upgrades and maintenance,” Musk said in an all-staff message seen by Bloomberg.
The factory was “back up and running as of yesterday,” and would rapidly ramp up to full production of Model 3 and Model Y cars “over the next several days,” he said.
Photo: Reuters
Backlogs at ports and severe snowstorms affecting ground transport have caused some of the supply-chain issues, a person familiar with the matter said.
Representatives for the Palo Alto, California-based electric-vehicle maker did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Bloomberg reported earlier on Thursday that some production had been paused at the factory. Staff on a Model 3 production line in Fremont were told their line would be down from Monday through Sunday next week, although some Model 3 employees were back in the factory on Wednesday, said another person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because the information is private.
While production-line outages are not unusual for automakers, they cost the companies revenue.
Tesla has said capacity issues at ports and semiconductor shortages are affecting its supply chain.
Chief financial officer Zach Kirkhorn said on an earnings call last month that the company is working to manage the disruptions, adding that they “may have a temporary impact.”
“We are not overly concerned this supply chain/factory disruption changes the overall delivery trajectory for 1Q and 2021,” Dan Ives, a Wedbush Securities analyst with a neutral rating on Tesla’s stock, wrote in a research note published on Thursday.
Musk’s e-mail encouraged employees to recommend friends to come join Tesla as the company “soon” resumes a second model S and X shift due to “high demand.”
The S/X production lines are “almost done retooling and will be aiming for max production next quarter,” he said.
Tesla shares dropped 8.1 percent to US$682.22 on Thursday, and were little changed in late trading. The stock has declined 3.3 percent so far this year.
The California plant is still the most important part of Tesla’s vehicle-production base, with capacity to make an estimated 600,000 vehicles a year.
The affected workers were told they would be paid for Monday and Tuesday, and not paid for Sunday through Wednesday next week. They were advised to take vacation time, if they had it.
Musk has also opened a plant near Shanghai, and is constructing facilities outside Berlin and in Texas.
Tesla has cut the price of its various models 14 times in markets including China, Japan and France this year, said GLJ Research LLC founder Gordon Johnson, who has a sell rating on the stock.
“When considering Tesla had excess inventory in the fourth quarter of 2020, and has never been able to sell-out its production capacity, we see the company as currently demand constrained, rather than production constrained,” Johnson wrote in a note earlier this week.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six