I believe the California state order that declares Tesla and other vehicle manufacturing activities within the state as "critical" (in line with federal law) suggests the following:
- Tesla shut down Fremont voluntarily in a time period (last week of Q1) where they were primarily making Q2 vehicles for Europe and China already. They did this probably to reduce local criticism in the Bay Area where most big companies are shutting down and are switching to work from home.
- They'll start a comprehensive worker health protection program in Fremont like in Shanghai, with masks, gloves, goggles, temperature monitoring, IR camera screening at the gates and periodic disinfection within the factory, no shuttle buses, etc. See the protection methods in China.
- They'll start ventilator production.
- In 2-4 weeks they'll restart vehicle production with lower staffing initially, and they'll make high margin vehicles like the Model Y and AWD/P models. They'll restock near zero or critically low inventory levels in various markets like the UK - which also helps their legal standing to restart.
- They have the authority under the California state directive and federal law, the Alameda county directives will either have to be modified, or can be ignored. If Alameda county still disagrees at that point, they can sue and they'll lose in court.
- Because the US economy is tanking and unemployment is soaring (expect U.S. unemployment to soar in next week's report by 1 million or more), while the virus and lockdowns are spreading, it's unrealistic to expect new car sales to be unaffected. This is why the other big OEMs shut down their factories. Q2 sales will drop across the industry while consumer fear and physical lockdowns run their course.
- They'll keep the parts of Fremont running that supply parts to GF3, such as the seat factory, with reduced staffing. GF1 won't have to shut down and will supply battery packs and power trains. GF3 will ramp up to 250,000/year faster than originally planned. Chinese economic activity is already in a post-pandemic rebound.
I.e. I believe Tesla did the pragmatic thing given local pressure and economic uncertainty, while making it easier to supply GF3 and to
restart the factory while the lockdown is in place.
Edit, now that I caught up with the thread, the news that GF3 is switching to two shifts is additional confirmation IMO:
If GF3 receives enough batteries from the U.S. they might even switch to three shift production, with a 4k/week runrate or more.
Tesla isn't a single factory company anymore, and their primary limit is battery output.