Tesla to suspend production at Shanghai plant due to anti-coronary restrictions

Tesla plans to suspend production at its Shanghai plant for at least a day as local government tightens restrictions on Covid following an increase in cases in the city, say people familiar with the matter.

Production will stop on Monday, executives said, asking not to be named because they do not have the authority to speak in public. Tesla has not yet informed employees whether it will extend the suspension beyond Monday, they said. Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Shanghai will rotate half of the city to conduct massive tests to combat the Covid-19 epidemic, which has turned it into China’s largest virus hotspot. Areas east of the Huangpu River, where the Tesla plant is located, will be closed for four days on Monday. Tesla has not yet told its employees how long the shutdown will take, although many of its employees will be faced with padlocks where they live.

The first giant plant outside Tesla’s home produced half of the electric vehicle’s vehicles last year and was forced to suspend production for two days earlier this month. The company said at the time that it was making “every effort” to ensure that production could continue at the plant, while “actively cooperating with the government mandate for Covid testing and related pandemic prevention measures”.

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, has reportedly resisted efforts by California health officials to shut down a plant in the United States during the early days of the pandemic. After about seven weeks of downtime, it reopened its plant in Fremont – its only U.S. vehicle plant at the time – on May 11, 2020, defying orders from county officials and causing authorities to arrest him.

Musk eventually cited the controversy as one of the reasons he moved Tesla’s headquarters from Palo Alto, California, to Austin, Texas in late 2021.