Tesla is working on the future. On Wednesday, the company uploaded a hype video that showed united Tesla employees building the Model 3, wild horses running across a ridge overlooking the Gigafactory in the Nevada desert, and people losing their mind at the torque created by an electric motor.
The video, shared by CEO Elon Musk on his Twitter page, is the sort of highlights reel that Tesla has not released for a good few years. It comes at a time when Model 3 production is ramping up, the Semi truck is about to hit the road, the second-generation Roadster is wowing critics with pre-release stats and the solar roof is completing the house of the future. It also comes amid allegations of poor working conditions at the company’s factories. Backed by a soundtrack of “Don’t Fall Asleep” by The Siege, the video shows Tesla employees building electric cars of the future, ending with a demonstration of the 2020 Roadster’s acceleration speeds of 0-60mph in 1.9 seconds.
The new Roadster.
On his personal Twitter page, Musk highlighted the “shot of wild horses & [Gigafactory] in winter” as a personal favorite of his to 21.7 million followers. Musk regularly shares photos from the under-construction Nevada factory, which when complete will be among the largest buildings in the world. Previous photos show Musk enjoying a campfire on the roof and watching the first Semi trucks roll out ready-built battery packs to the California car factory. The video shows the high-intensity work taking place on the premises as the company seeks to expand into new industries and broader markets.
The worker-centric video also comes at a time when Tesla’s employment practices are under the spotlight. An April article from Reveal claimed “workers have been sliced by machinery, crushed by forklifts, burned in electrical explosions and sprayed with molten metal,” which Tesla dismissed as “an article that paints a completely false picture of [the company].” The United Auto Workers has pushed to organize the company’s Fremont factory, in March filing unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board. Tesla previously dismissed allegations from the union in May 2017, claiming that Jose Moran’s account of working conditions was “a misleading narrative based on anecdotes, not facts.”
Tesla’s first quarter earnings call this month showed the company is pushing past its production rate of 2,000 Model 3s per week, seeing to fulfill the 400,000 or so reservations in its backlog. As it pushes on with its energy revolution, the company is set to give its next update on progress in three months’ time.
Musk has referred to the Gigafactory before as “the machine that builds the machine,” and the video shows how it’s developed into a key part of the company’s operations during this expansion.
