Article content continued

The word “temporary” may be in Tesla’s tent permits with Fremont, but Musk has suggested it could stick around a while. He told one Twitter follower last week that he’s not sure the company actually needs a building anyway. He described the new assembly line as “way better” than the one in the plant that cost the company hundreds of millions.

That tweet spoke volumes to Dave Sullivan, an analyst at research firm AutoPacific who used to supervise Ford Motor Co. factories. “To say that it’s more efficient to build this with scrap pieces laying around means that either somebody made really bad decisions with the parts in the plant inside, or there are a lot of other problems yet to be discovered with Tesla’s efficiency.”

So here we have it — build cars manually in the parking lot Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.'s Max Warburton, financial analyst

Fremont is working closely with Tesla to make sure that the tent is in compliance with building and fire codes, said Gary West, an official for the city. Tesla applied for a building permit to erect the tent on June 7, according to municipal records. A permit has been issued for equipment installation and one for an overhead fire sprinkler system is pending. The tent doesn’t have air conditioning, according to the city documents.

The tent was supplied by a company called Sprung, which refers to its products as “high performance tensioned membrane structures” and constructed the facility that housed the NASA Space Shuttle in the 1980s. The one at Tesla covers 137,250 square feet. Building plans show that it’s adjacent to the factory’s north paint shop; it’s visible from the platform of the Warm Springs BART station.

The assembly line inside will start out as fully manual and gradually convert to automation in steps, according to Brian Johnson, an analyst at Barclays Plc who met with Tesla’s investor relations department last week.

“It’s preposterous,” Bernstein’s Warburton said. “I don’t think anyone’s seen anything like this outside of the military trying to service vehicles in a war zone. I pity any customer taking delivery of one of these cars. The quality will be shocking.”

Bloomberg.com