Coincidentally, right around the same time as Alameda County has once again been inundated with coronavirus cases, and just hours after we reported that 15% of Tesla employees have been affected by coronavirus at Fremont, the company has conveniently decided to shut its Fremont factory down for "major upgrades".
At least, that's the PR line-du jour that was handed to the pro-Tesla lot over at electrek, who broke the news on Wednesday morning. And what better way to improve things in Fremont - especially now that your company is bordering on a $275 billion market cap - than adding another tent?
Electrek writes that the "plans included a new tent-like structure for a new assembly line":
“Now we are told that Tesla plans to do something similar for Model Y and deploy some production capacity under a sprung structure to go in operation when they can reopen the plant.”
"The strategy follows Tesla’s famous GA4 assembly line built under a tent-like structure in 2018," they reported. Famous? Not quite the word we would use. Infamous, perhaps.
The piece then goes on to defend the idea of building another tent: "At the time, Tesla received a lot of criticism for the unusual approach, but the new general assembly capacity helped Tesla increase Model 3 production to 5,000 units per week and accelerate Tesla’s growth."
Apparently electrek hasn't checked in on the quality of these vehicles anytime recently and has apparently missed bumpers flying off in traffic and cars swerving into oncoming traffic without warning.
"Since March, Tesla’s GA4 line has been...