To compete with Chinese electric vehicles, Elon Musk is following their version of the Labor Code.
After significantly lowering the prices of its models already in circulation in recent months, Tesla announced a few weeks ago that the manufacture of a new, even more affordable electric vehicle was in the works. Called Redwood, the latter should not only base its more attractive price on classics such as economies of scale or a lower requirement for comfort, but on increased exploitation of the manufacturer’s workers. We won’t do it again.
An affordable Tesla
Tesla has no problem finding its audience: for once, the promise of its CEO Elon Musk was respected, and the Model Y was the best-selling car in the world in 2023 But the electric vehicle manufacturer does not want to stop there and, at the beginning of January, announced that it was working on a new project called Redwood.
The objective is to offer a more affordable range of cars in order to conquer a new audience, and the first models should leave the factories for 2025 with a price which should be 25,000 dollars, much less than the Model Y and its 46,990 dollars.
“ We’ll sleep on the assembly line »
To try to achieve his objectives, while the billionaire is accustomed to making promises that are far too ambitious – even misleading according to the courts – Elon Musk has a very precise idea of the levers to activate. He allegedly told his employees, according to Business Insider “ this will be a very demanding increase in production. We’ll almost have to sleep on the assembly line. No, not almost, we will »
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This is not the first time that Elon Musk has imposed such working conditions on the manufacturer’s employees. Because in fact, it is the latter who have the task of meeting the often fanciful production deadlines imposed by their boss, for whom the answer to most problems seems to be to adopt an “ultra hardcore” work culture. There is no guarantee that such work-life balance will actually benefit the quality or productivity of the company. But that didn’t stop the billionaire from importing this culture of worker exploitation to Twitter. With, moreover, the results that we know.
Whether he actually plans to do it himself, as this statement implies, remains to be verified.
Source : Futurism, Business Insider, The Verge
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