1. The whole article was fishy to me. He interviewed Elon Musk and only supplied two direct quotes in his whole article. Note that the 3000 employees at the fremont factory and 2000 at assembly was not directly quoted in the article. It was the reporter's paraphrase of what Musk said.
2. If you watch the Bloomberg video, there were several times were the reporter was too loose with his words. In the video he says that Tesla's hoping to be at 800 cars/week in "a year from now or late next year". Which is it? Is it a year from now... or is it late next year? The reporter is not clear. In his written article he says "late 2014". But even what does that mean? Second half of 2014. By the end of 2014? 4Q of 2012? My question is what EXACTLY did Elon Musk say? Did Elon Musk say "late 2014" or "by end of 2014" or something else.
3. 3000 factory workers just doesn't make sense with the numbers. Tesla had 3000 total employees at 12/31/12 and they were already at a 20k unit run rate. My guess is that over half of those workers were at the Palo Alto HQ, stores, service centers and design center. Meaning, that Tesla probably had max of 1500 at the factory total. So, from end of 2012 until now Tesla has hired 1500 full-time workers at the factory? Totally doesn't make sense.
4. In the video, he says that Tesla has 3,000 workers in "Fremont, California, the Bay Area". I wonder if Elon actually said they have 3,000 workers in the Bay Area and the reporter just assumed it was all in Fremont. "2000 doing assembly", I'm curious as to what exactly Elon said. Could Elon have said they have 2000 working in vehicle production and delivery? (this includes delivery specialists, etc) Or did Elon mean that 2000 were based in Fremont and grouped the word "assembly" to mean all of Fremont factory roles?
I just wished the reporter was more clear.
In fact, when I first read the article this morning I actually emailed the reporter asking him for an interview transcript if he had one. This is because I really couldn't get much concrete detail from his article because of all the paraphrasing.
* Note: another reason why the 2000 assembly workers is fishy is because it doesn't make sense when compared to other auto factories. With 2000 assembly workers, other auto manufacturers are making hundreds of thousands a car a year (not 21k like Tesla).
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Look at the data portion for more scary stuff! It's almost as though we just went through a 4:3 stock split!
