Musk Says Excessive Automation Was ‘My Mistake’

• April 13 2018
• Dana Hull

Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk, who’s built up an aura around how automated his car assembly plant will be, has news for humans: We still need your help.

Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk, who’s built up an aura around how automated his car assembly plant will be, has news for humans: We still need your help.

“Excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake. To be precise, my mistake,” the chief executive officer wrote in a tweet Friday. “Humans are underrated.”

Tesla has struggled to hit production targets for the Model 3, the first sedan the company has tried to mass-manufacture and eventually sell for as little as $35,000. One of the factors holding the company back was too many robots at its factory in Fremont, California, he said in an interview with CBS This Morning that aired earlier Friday.

“We had this crazy, complex network of conveyor belts, and it wasn’t working, so we got rid of that whole thing,” said Musk, wearing a black Tesla cap and safety glasses.

Tesla acquired Perbix, a closely held maker of automated machines used for manufacturing, late last year as it was struggling to get Model 3 output going. A week before the company announced the deal, Musk, 46, alluded to how robots were contributing to the slow ramp up.

“With Model 3, either the machine works, or it doesn’t, or it’s limping along and we get short quite severely on output,” Musk said on a Nov. 1 earnings call. By contrast, with the Model S sedan or Model X sport utility vehicle, “because a lot less of it was automated, we could scale up labor hours and achieve a high level of production.”