Musk: Tesla's Berlin and Texas factories are burning money

Tesla boss Elon Musk stated that the Texas and Berlin factories lost billions of dollars due to supply shortages affecting the scale of production. Musk described these factories as ‘money furnaces’. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that due to the problems experienced in Chinese ports and the insufficiency of battery supply, Tesla’s new factories in Texas and Berlin are having difficulty increasing their production and are losing billions of dollars. Speaking at the Silicon Valley Tesla Owners Club, Musk said, “Both our Berlin and Austin factories are burning huge amounts of money right now.” Stating that Tesla’s Texas factory is producing “very few” vehicles due to the difficulties experienced in increasing the production of the new batteries called “4680”, Musk stated that the equipment necessary for the traditional batteries called 2170 remained in Chinese ports. Stating that the Berlin factory is in a slightly better condition, Musk cited the fact that vehicle production at the Berlin factory started using 2170 batteries as the reason for this. There will be a 10 percent reduction Musk had stated in his assessment at the Bloomberg Qatar Economic Forum this week that there would be layoffs at Tesla. Musk evaluated the possible effects of inflation and rising interest rates in the US economy and said, “A recession is inevitable at some point, and the probability of it happening in the near term is higher than not. Therefore, it would not be right to call it a certainty, but we can say that the probability of it happening is more likely.” Musk also touched on the effects of the current economic situation on the car manufacturer and said, “Tesla will reduce its salaried workforce by around 10 percent in the next three months. We grew very quickly on the salaried employee side, and we achieved rapid growth in some areas when necessary.”