Elon Musk Urges Tesla Employees to Stop Rushing Deliveries Instead, the Tesla CEO is telling employees to minimize costs.
By Chloe Arrojado Edited by Amanda Breen
Though customers may be well into their holiday season spending habits, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has asked employees to pump the brakes on rushing Q4 orders in order to hit sales goals.
On Friday, Musk sent a company-wide email to Tesla, saying its focus "should be on minimizing cost of deliveries rather than spending heavily on expedite fees, overtime and temporary contractors just so that cars arrive in Q4."
Throughout 2021, delivery delays have plagued Tesla due to a number of logistical issues. However, Musk wrote that Tesla's historic strategy of rushing to maximize deliveries isn't all that beneficial in the end.
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"What has happened historically is that we sprint like crazy at end of quarter to maximize deliveries, but then deliveries drop massively in the first few weeks of the next quarter," Musk wrote in the email. "In effect, looked at over a six month period, we won't have delivered any extra cars but we will have spent a lot of money and burned ourselves out to accelerate deliveries in the last two weeks of each quarter."
Musk continued, writing that the company is still expecting a large wave of deliveries towards the end of the year. However, he adds that now is "nonetheless the right time to start reducing the size of the wave in favor of a steadier and more efficient pace of deliveries."
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