It’s official: Tesla is building again.
Reports today reveal that Elon Musk’s electric car factory in California has been cleared to reopen due to a groundbreaking ruling from Gov. Gavin Newsom regarding retail, manufacturing and some additional kinds of ‘non-essential’ businesses.
“Reuters reported Friday after viewing an email Musk sent to employees that its sole U.S. production plant in Fremont, California, will reopen Friday afternoon,” writes Sean Szymkowski for CNet’s Road/Show. “According to the email, operations will restart with 30% staff levels per shift and Musk added it won’t be a requirement for those who feel uncomfortable about returning to work just yet.”
All of this takes place as green energy companies prepare to get something of a black eye from the new documentary “Planet of the Humans,” co-produced by none other than Michael Moore, who has been in his apartment for six weeks straight.
The film documents all sorts of peccadilloes on the part of companies like Tesla that purport to offer greener solutions for the future of the planet. For instance, “Planet of the Humans” throws significant shade on the use of lithium-ion batteries which power the Tesla car, and suggests that the related raw materials mining has a dramatic negative environmental impact, not to mention inhumane work practices attached to it.
Then, too, Musk and his partner Grimes, a performance artist, may be distracted by their new baby and trying to get an unconventional name registered at City Hall.
Debates abound on the Internet over whether Elon Musk is a savior of humanity or a capitalist monster.
Part of that debate will focus on the re-opening of the plant and Tesla’s interactions with union workers.
“We all knew this day would come at some point,” UAW president Rory Gamble told reporters this week. “While the companies have the sole contractual right to determine the opening of plants, our UAW focus and role is and will continue to be, on health and safety protocols in which we have the contractual right to protect our members.”
There’s the tendency in some parts of the commentariat to puncture the bubble of Musk’s popularity and cast him as a rather Galt-ian figure.
“Recently, (Musk) got into serious trouble with the SEC for tweeting that he would be taking Tesla private, at $420 a share—only Musk could violate securities law and make a juvenile nod to stoner culture simultaneously,” wrote Alex Shephard in February at The New Republic. “He has also made a number of false or misleading claims about SolarCity, his struggling green energy company. The messianic Musk had wanted to oversee the first vertically integrated clean energy company; instead, he created a fiasco that is threatening Tesla, the cornerstone of his empire.”
The column, which designates Musk the “oligarch of the month,” also takes aim at Hyperloop.
“There’s nothing ‘public’ about Musk’s fanciful approach to public transportation” Shephard writes. “If he had his way, wealthy, comfortable people would never have to rub elbows with anyone less well off than themselves.”
But to the numbers: after cratering in the bloodbath that was the equities market mid-March, TSLA went on to rebound fully, roughly doubling in stock value. Whether that trend continues may have more to do with Musk’s reputation that you might expect. Keep an eye out as Tesla tries to re-start U.S. production.
