Tesla suspends production at Shanghai gigafactory

Tesla has to suspend production at its Shanghai plant again, this time for four days. The production pause will run from Monday morning until Friday morning this week.

++ This article has been updated. Kindly continue reading below. ++

The city government had announced on Sunday that it was sending the metropolis into a harsh lockdown in two phases to conduct Covid 19 tests and get a grip on one of China’s most severe outbreaks. Reuters subsequently reported, citing two people familiar with the matter, that production at Tesla would be affected until Friday morning.

Initially, the carmaker, together with its suppliers, had tried to maintain operations in a so-called “closed management” style. This involves the (tested) employees sleeping and eating in the factory and thus remaining on the closed factory premises throughout.

According to Reuters sources, Tesla had already called workers on Sunday to come to the factory for “closed management” production. In the evening, however, the staff was sent home again when it became clear that there was not enough stock to guarantee production until Friday morning.

Officially, Tesla would not comment on the production stop. The carmaker only said that it always strives to fulfil its responsibility to prevent epidemics and that Tesla believes that Shanghai’s Covid 19 measures have helped lay the foundation for the city’s future development.

Tesla had already had to pause production in Shanghai for two days in mid-March.

Update 07 April 2022

Tesla continues to be unable to build cars in Shanghai. The renewed production pause was initially scheduled to last until Friday last week and was then extended to include Friday, Saturday and Monday of this week. Now it appears that Tesla’s production stoppage in Shanghai will continue until at least Thursday this week.

Tesla has thus lost twelve production days there so far – leaving it unable to produce an estimated nearly 25,000 electric cars. In February, just under 2,000 vehicles a day came off the production line – the estimate is based on this figure.

If the lockdown is lifted, it is also unclear how quickly production (not only at Tesla) can restart. As Bloomberg Quint reports, semiconductor manufacturers are piling up the chips needed in the factories. As truck drivers are also affected by the measures, no transport is possible here.

reuters.com, bloombergquint.com (update)