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The bottleneck is automation. Tesla is still producing cars completely manually. This is why Musk bought the automation company Grohmann. But after he demande

The bottleneck is automation. Tesla is still producing cars completely manually. This is why Musk bought the automation company Grohmann. But after he demanded they work 100h weeks (instead of their previous 35h weeks), and said unions would be unnecessary, almost the entire company quit and left. That's the current bottleneck, automation of assembly.

gmueckl 9y ago
Grohmann is a German company. Having employees work more than 40 or 50 hours a week on a regular basis is hard to defend legally. Employee protection is pretty strict about that. Heck, even working more than 10 hours straight is borderline illegal and puts the boss (not the employee) in very hot water. So I can hardly believe that 100h per week were actually demanded.
- kuschku 9y ago
  Not just work, but unpaid overtime, as Musk demands from most employees. This story of the 80-100h demands was actually in German news at the time, plus of course the complaints of making Grohmann dependent on a single car company.
  - gmueckl 9y ago
    I missed that, but I am curious. Do you have references for that?
    - intended 9y ago
      Found these - https://www.businessinsider.in/Tesla-is-having-some-predictable-union-problems/articleshow/58302515.cms https://www.businessinsider.in/Tesla-is-having-some-predicta... and then this https://qz.com/1107802/tesla-raises-wages-30-in-germany-soon-after-firing-its-us-workers/ https://qz.com/1107802/tesla-raises-wages-30-in-germany-soon...
      - jsjohnst 9y ago
        None of those even vaguely hint at 100hr work weeks or anything even remotely like that.
- s2g 9y ago
  They also won't stand for unpaid overtime or union crushing. Musk's cult doesn't work as well when workers are used to real protections.
ggm 9y ago
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-germany-exclusive/exclusive-teslas-klaus-grohmann-ousted-after-clash-with-ceo-musk-sources-idUSKBN17T2IY https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-germany-exclusive/e... Tesla executive Klaus Grohmann was ousted last month after a clash with Chief Executive Elon Musk over the strategy of Grohmann’s firm, which Tesla had acquired in November, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.
_ph_ 9y ago
Sorry, no. Tesla ist not producing 4000 cars per week (S+X+3) completely manually. Not unless they have 500.000 employees like Foxcon. And I would ask you to provide links for your claims. Following Tesla buying Grohmann, I saw no reports of 100h weeks asked (which would be illegal by labor laws), nor of large parts of the employees leaving. Currently, a complete automated battery poduction line designed and built by the former Grohmann company, is being shipped to Nevada, after installation in March it is expected to double the battery output to 5000 per week.
PhaseBlue 9y ago
"Tesla is still producing cars completely manually." This is blatantly false. Back in November they were doing this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xor2ubHr8Ag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xor2ubHr8Ag The current bottlenecks are in the battery production at the Gigafactory, they screwed up and had too much faith in a contractor doing the battery pack assembly lines.
- glaberficken 9y ago
  Ok, I found this link which is interesting and agrees with the "Batteries bottleneck" version https://insideevs.com/musk-says-biggest-model-3-bottleneck/ https://insideevs.com/musk-says-biggest-model-3-bottleneck/ > “To date, our primary production constraint has been in the battery module assembly line at Gigafactory 1, where cells are packaged into modules.” “We had to rewrite all of the software, from scratch. We managed to write 20 to 30 man-years of software in 4 weeks.”
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

gmueckl 9y ago

Grohmann is a German company. Having employees work more than 40 or 50 hours a week on a regular basis is hard to defend legally. Employee protection is pretty strict about that. Heck, even working more than 10 hours straight is borderline illegal and puts the boss (not the employee) in very hot water. So I can hardly believe that 100h per week were actually demanded.

kuschku 9y ago
Not just work, but unpaid overtime, as Musk demands from most employees. This story of the 80-100h demands was actually in German news at the time, plus of course the complaints of making Grohmann dependent on a single car company.
- gmueckl 9y ago
  I missed that, but I am curious. Do you have references for that?
  - intended 9y ago
    Found these - https://www.businessinsider.in/Tesla-is-having-some-predictable-union-problems/articleshow/58302515.cms https://www.businessinsider.in/Tesla-is-having-some-predicta... and then this https://qz.com/1107802/tesla-raises-wages-30-in-germany-soon-after-firing-its-us-workers/ https://qz.com/1107802/tesla-raises-wages-30-in-germany-soon...
    - jsjohnst 9y ago
      None of those even vaguely hint at 100hr work weeks or anything even remotely like that.
s2g 9y ago
They also won't stand for unpaid overtime or union crushing. Musk's cult doesn't work as well when workers are used to real protections.

ggm 9y ago

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-germany-exclusive/exclusive-teslas-klaus-grohmann-ousted-after-clash-with-ceo-musk-sources-idUSKBN17T2IY https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-germany-exclusive/e... Tesla executive Klaus Grohmann was ousted last month after a clash with Chief Executive Elon Musk over the strategy of Grohmann’s firm, which Tesla had acquired in November, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.

_ph_ 9y ago

Sorry, no. Tesla ist not producing 4000 cars per week (S+X+3) completely manually. Not unless they have 500.000 employees like Foxcon. And I would ask you to provide links for your claims. Following Tesla buying Grohmann, I saw no reports of 100h weeks asked (which would be illegal by labor laws), nor of large parts of the employees leaving. Currently, a complete automated battery poduction line designed and built by the former Grohmann company, is being shipped to Nevada, after installation in March it is expected to double the battery output to 5000 per week.

PhaseBlue 9y ago

"Tesla is still producing cars completely manually." This is blatantly false. Back in November they were doing this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xor2ubHr8Ag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xor2ubHr8Ag The current bottlenecks are in the battery production at the Gigafactory, they screwed up and had too much faith in a contractor doing the battery pack assembly lines.

glaberficken 9y ago
Ok, I found this link which is interesting and agrees with the "Batteries bottleneck" version https://insideevs.com/musk-says-biggest-model-3-bottleneck/ https://insideevs.com/musk-says-biggest-model-3-bottleneck/ > “To date, our primary production constraint has been in the battery module assembly line at Gigafactory 1, where cells are packaged into modules.” “We had to rewrite all of the software, from scratch. We managed to write 20 to 30 man-years of software in 4 weeks.”

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]