Washington Post
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said his electric-car factories are “losing billions of dollars” as global supply-chain disruptions and challenges in battery manufacturing constrain the company’s ability to scale up production. New factories in Berlin and Austin — where Tesla moved its headquarters in December — “are gigantic money furnaces right now,” Musk told members of a club of Silicon Valley Tesla owners in Austin on May 30, according to a video of the interview published Wednesday. “There should be like a giant roaring sound, which is the sound of money on fire,” he added. Both factories opened earlier this year to much fanfare. At the launch of the Gigafactory in Austin in April — where Tesla produces its Model Y and plans to produce the Cybertruck, a futuristic electric pickup truck whose design Musk said had just been finalized — Musk heralded “a new phase of Tesla’s future.” But those factories are producing a “puny” number of vehicles due to shortages of batteries and global supply-chain bottlenecks, with crucial parts stuck in ports in China, Musk said. “It has required all of our attention just to keep the factories going” in the face of “severe” disruptions, he told the Tesla fans in Austin.
