Manila: After a good Q2 performance, Tesla employees at the company's plant in Shanghai said they had received sizeable rewards — in the form of a significant rise in quarterly incentives.
Several workers reported that in Q2, their bonuses were almost 1.5 times their monthly base income.
The employees told Reuters that this is more generous than the prior incentives they received for performing above average, which came to 1.2 times their monthly base income.
Gigafactory Shanghai is reportedly Tesla’s most productive and profitable factory, with a run rate of 20,000 units weekly on average. The company has seen a spike in demand since it announced price cuts in January across all markets.
It was unclear how many workers actually saw their wage raise. About 20,000 people work at the Shanghai plant, which produces Model 3 and Model Y. Globally, Tesla had 127,855 employees as of December 2022.
The bonuses were reportedly reduced in Q1 after a "safety incident". This, according to plant managers, was the cause of the bonuses’ reduction. According to reports, as a result, their bonuses were reduced by 0.785 times their monthly wage, Teslarati reported.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk declared that he had been informed of the employee displeasure following the revelations of the bonus reductions and will be "looking into it."
The Gigafactory Shanghai is one of Musk's significant achievements, and has long been considered as one of the most important components of the Tesla system.
The EV maker has been ramping up production out of its factories — including those in Germany and the US — but the Shanghai plant has achieved a number of milestones.
Musk has praised the caliber of the Tesla electric cars produced in Shanghai.
Tesla has long engaged in verbal combat with detractors over the quality and construction of its vehicles. As part of its due diligence, Tesla standardises its quality through stringent tests across all of its factories worldwide.
“It’s been incredibly impressive how you have been able to overcome so many difficulties and challenges. It warms my heart. I talk to people throughout the world. The cars we produce here…are not just the most efficient (in production, but also the highest quality. I feel so much gets accomplished. There’s so much positive energy in getting things done that I think will be very important not just for Tesla but also for the world,” Musk said during a late-night visit to Tesla Giga Shanghai in May.
In May, Tesla has reportedly applied for regulatory clearance to expand Giga Shanghai powertrain production capacity to 1.75 million (from 1.25 million) — and to begin producing for the first time pouch-type battery cells (20,000-amp-hours of cells).
Gigafactory Shanghai hit 1 million Model Y’s last week, while Giga Berlin is expanding to 1-million production. Tesla is reportedly talking to India for 500,000 production factory, even as the EV maker is still deciding on Europe (France, Italy, etc).
