This never really made sense either -- labor is manufacturing's largest "avoidable" cost by far, so all manufacturers want to reduce the amount of labor to an absolute minimum. The machines Tesla were buying to automate their plants only existed because other auto manufacturers were already using them for the same purpose. Tesla thought they could extend their use to places where traditional manufacturers had decided against it -- for instance shaping/fitting body panels, but quickly learned why the GMs and Toyotas of the world had human input in those areas.
Trying to "out automate" companies who make literal millions of cars per year was never a recipe for enduring margins. There are plenty of videos from even economy car assembly plants 15 years ago where robots did the entirety of the welding and humans were only involved for little bits of final assembly.
It's almost like a system that selects only for the best marketers (the elevator pitch and pitch deck) is terrible at finding people with a grounded worldview and an understanding of the market.
Pretty funny considering even people who don't pay attention to him (like myself) are seeing repeated patterns of him walking into areas he doesn't know and thinking he knows better than all the existing industry/insider knowledge.
Now i'm just trying to figure out of it's arrogance or ignorance at the root of his problems in this space.
Trying to "out automate" companies who make literal millions of cars per year was never a recipe for enduring margins. There are plenty of videos from even economy car assembly plants 15 years ago where robots did the entirety of the welding and humans were only involved for little bits of final assembly.