By Michael Elkins
A story by Bloomberg today, citing people familiar with the plans, reports that electric vehicle giant Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) is sending engineers and production staff from its recently upgraded Shanghai factory to its plant in Fremont, California. Tesla believes that the move is necessary to boost production at the U.S. facility.
The carmaker will dispatch a staff of roughly 200 workers made up of mostly automation and control engineers to assist efforts to increase output in Fremont, where Tesla produces the Model S, X, 3 and Y vehicles. According to the Bloomberg report, the assignment will last at least three months with the first workers setting off as soon as this month.
Tesla delivered a record 83,135 cars in China in September after increasing the capacity of its Shanghai factory. The upgrade took about five weeks and helped to double the factory’s annual capacity to around 1 million vehicles. Currently, Fremont can produce about 650,000 cars a year.
Tesla delivered 343,830 cars worldwide last quarter and expects to come up just shy of its target for 50% growth this year.
“There weren’t enough boats, there weren’t enough trains, there weren’t enough car carriers to actually support the wave” of vehicle deliveries at the end of the last quarter, Musk said during Tesla’s earnings call. “Whether we like it or not, we actually have to smooth out the delivery of cars intra-quarter, because there just aren’t enough transportation objects to move them around.”
Shares of TSLA are up 0.50% in mid-day trading Tuesday.