Tesla’s attempt to restart production at Fremont factory in California is seeing pushbacks from local county officials.
As we previously reported, It has now been seven weeks since Tesla had to close its Fremont factory, which brought its operations in North America and Europe to a crawl.
An announcement from California governor Gavin Newsom gave some hope that Tesla could reopen the Fremont factory before the end of the month, but the state guidelines are not a clear green light for Tesla to restart operations.
Last night, CEO Elon Musk announced to employees in an email that Tesla would be trying to restart production on Friday afternoon.
He referred to Newsom’s announcement in the email to employees.
As we reported this morning, Tesla could be pushing its luck by attempting to reopen based on Newsom’s statement since it actually only referred to manufacturing related to a few retail businesses that are allowed to reopen for curbside pickup on Friday.
Furthermore, the governor also said that the state’s guidelines can be followed or not by local counties who ultimately decide when to start lifting their shelter-in-place orders.
Sure enough, Alameda County issued a statement on Friday that threw a wheel in Tesla’s plans (via the Los Angeles Times):
Tesla ‘must not reopen,’ the county said in a statement early Friday afternoon. ‘Restoring all daily activities too soon risks a rapid spike in cases and would jeopardize the relative stability we’ve seen in our health and hospital system.’
Last night, Tesla’s HR said that they wanted about 30% of Fremont factory’s 10,000 people workforce to be called back to work in order begin the plant restart process.
Electrek’s Take
Well, I saw that coming. I don’t think Tesla is dumb. They knew it was a risk to attempt a restart based on the state’s announcement, but they wanted to give it a shot.
The silver lining is that Tesla is reportedly talking with the county, and maybe they can show them what they did at Gigafactory Shanghai to convince them to reopen Fremont.
What do you think? Let us know in the comment section below.
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