Elon Musk, the co-founder of the indebted electric car maker Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA), is back to sleeping on the floor of his factory and will directly oversee the production of Model 3 cars as he attempts to fix production delays ahead of the release of first-quarter production figures.
Musk is reportedly taking immediate charge of the assembly line for Model 3s, replacing Doug Field, Tesla’s head of engineering, who had been managing the engineering of vehicles as well as their production.
Sleeping on factory floor ... not the first time
The revelation sent shares into "Insane" mode, climbing 6% to US$268 in the first minutes of trading Tuesday.
In a series of tweets, Musk dismissed claims that Field was being sidelined, referring to him as one of the “world’s most talented engineering execs.”
“My job as CEO is to focus on what’s most critical, which is currently Model 3 production,” he wrote as a way of explanation. “About a year ago I asked Doug to manage both engineering & production. He agreed that Tesla needed engineering & production better aligned, so we don’t design cars that are crazy hard to build. Right now, though, better to divide & conquer, so I’m back to sleeping at factory. Car biz is hell.”
The last time Musk revealed to the public that he had been sleeping on the factory floor in Fremont, California, was in 2015 during the rollout of Tesla’s Model X, which also had serious production problems and multi-year delays due partly to its falcon-wing doors and its high-tech motors. Investors are eagerly awaiting Tesla’s production figures for the first quarter, which are expected to miss forecasts.
With its cars still wildly popular and people putting down US$1,000 to reserve one, Tesla is facing tremendous pressure to build enough Model 3 cars to meet demand.
Tesla has lofty ambitions of doing twice as much production in the quarter, to produce as many as 5,000 cars per week, according to published press reports.
The group, however, has been hit with a spate of disappointing news recently. Not only has it seen its debt downgraded by the rating agency Moody's, but last month a Model X crashed while in autopilot mode, killing its driver and Tesla's Model S cars built before April 2016 are being recalled due to steering problems, according to published reports.