Elon Musk Confesses ‘Humans Are Underrated’
Tesla CEO Elon Musk in an interview with CBS This Morning last Wednesday admitted that Tesla depended too heavily on automation to boost Model 3 production.
Musk also tweeted last Friday to reiterate that Tesla used too many robots to produce the Model 3 electric vehicle in Tesla’s only auto factory. “Excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake. To be precise, my mistake. Humans are underrated,” he said.
According to Musk, too much of automation led to “production hell” that went on for months, which in turn led to failure in reaching its production targets. “We got complacent about some of the things that we felt were our core technology. We put too much new technology into the Model 3 all at once. This – this should have been staged,” Musk said.
This eventually has prompted Musk to substitute robots with humans to meet the required electric vehicle production. “We had this crazy, complex network of conveyor belts,” Musk told CBS News, “and it was not working, so we got rid of that whole thing.”
In April, Tesla had reported that it was unable to meet its target to produce 2,500 Model 3 cars a week by the end of the first quarter. The company was able to produce only 2,020 Model 3 vehicles in a week at the end of the first quarter.
However, Musk is now hopeful of achieving target of producing about 5,000 units per week by the end of the second quarter. He said: “We were able to unlock some of the critical things that were holding us back from reaching 2,000 cars a week. But since then, we’ve continued to do 2,000 cars a week.”
Currently, Musk is sleeping at Tesla’s Fremont factory and personally overlooking the production of Model 3 cars to ensure that the process of vehicle’s roll-out is smooth.
