Tesla to restructure C-level and streamline production

Elon Musk is busy exercising his role as CEO and has written another email to staff to announce a “thorough reorganisation” of Tesla, especially on the exec level. Meanwhile, the shopfloor reports advances in Model 3 production, whilst hackers race to code out remaining robotic flaws.

Tesla is undergoing change if not living through a bit of a crisis on its way to volume manufacturer of electric cars. CEO Elon Musk has been taking charge increasingly, diving deep into production processes and company organisation. A week ago, he had asked for a rather brutal review of all contractors that now require a Tesla employee to personally vouch for them.

Now his latest email sent to the entire global Tesla workforce announces a “thorough reorganisation” of the company that this time involves management as well. Reads the email as quoted by Electrek: “As part of the reorg, we are flattening the management structure to improve communication, combining functions where sensible and trimming activities that are not vital to the success of our mission.”

This sounds as if redundancies are imminent although Musk also stated that they continue to hire, at least for manufacturing of the Model 3. If the “reorg” is connected to Tesla’s chief engineer Doug Fields taking a “sabbatical” for a few weeks is unclear though.

Reports from the shop floor say that Tesla is approaching the 4,000 units a week threshold in Model 3 production by now. The increase in output had followed planned halts of the lines with another set for later this month (we reported).

The problems with Model 3 production had been down to various factors, starting with bottlenecks in battery production at the Gigafactory and continuing in Fremont, where men and machines put the electric cars together. Musk had lately stated that they had introduced too much automation too soon. These robotic bottlenecks are not down to non-lubricrated metal arms however but to software rather. The Tesla CEO thus called for a Hackathon so that hackers currently compete in a hacking race to solve such Industry 4.0 perks.

electrek.co (reorganisation), teslarati.com (production), electrek.co (Hackathon)