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Hey there. I'm going to let you in on a little secret. You want to know what it takes to build a startup car company that doesn't get sent to the landfill of history? You've got to be hardcore. I was in the factory on Thanksgiving Day, as were many other Tesla people. Seven days a week, going on vacation. It's hardcore, okay? We have to be relentless about cost. It's what we do. We have to be super hardcore about it.
If you pay enough attention to Elon Musk on earnings calls or big Tesla events or even his Twitter account, it's a phrase he uses a lot. Variations include extremely hardcore, super hardcore, or, and God help you if it comes to this, ultra hardcore. He's described being hardcore as, quote, long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.
It is absurd that Tesla is live. Absurd. Absurd. So what do you owe that? What do you accredit that to? Excruciating effort. By you. 100-hour weeks. By everyone. By everyone here at Tesla. Yes. This is Musk talking to tech journalist Kara Swisher a few years ago. There wasn't some other way to do this, Kara. This attitude has made Musk famous as an entrepreneur, and it's made his investors a lot of money. But there's another side to his drive, a darker side.
Just ask his workers. What I saw was, you know, a lot of people sleeping on the floor, people working 10, 12 hours a day, six, seven days a week. Let's say you drop something. Let's say you do something wrong. You're getting fired on the spot because Elon's coming out of a room looking dead at you and firing you. Basically, people were getting hurt easily. So they called HR to fix things. But everyone there in the meeting was terrified to say anything.
Being ultra hardcore means you break all the rules and you don't let anything or anyone ever slow you down. At Tesla, it's also led to countless scandals, investigations, fines and lawsuits, including for rampant gender and racial discrimination. This ethos has even led Tesla to uproot its entire headquarters to escape red tape. Musk says Tesla's trying to craft a sustainable future through electric vehicles. Are you sincerely trying to save the world?
Well, I'm trying to do good things. But getting it done at any cost, even the cost of his workers, is it worth it? I'm Patrick George, and this is Land of the Giants.
There's this memo that went to Tesla employees in 2012 when they were deep into ramping up the Model S. Subject line, ultra hardcore. We'll let our old pal AI Elon read this for you. Please prepare yourself for a level of intensity that is greater than anything most of you have ever experienced before. Revolutionizing industries is not for the faint of heart, but nothing is more rewarding or exciting.
And I will personally make sure that those who produce exceptional results are rewarded exceptionally. Remember, I'm just an AI reading an excerpt of Musk's memo to employees. It was an interesting time. It was an interesting memo to get.
But really, we all felt that that was what we were doing anyway. That's Hubert Mays. He was the chief suspension engineer of the Model S. Musk personally lured Mays away from Ford, where he'd worked for almost 20 years. Mays is legit, by the way. He designed the suspension on the Ford GT supercar.
So he knew what Tesla was up against, what it would take to battle the industry giants. The atmosphere that I walked into was one of complete focus. Everybody knew what they had to do. Everybody was pushing in the same direction. And since we were all in the startup environment, we all understood the risks.
fail at Ford, and you'd probably get assigned to a new project. At Tesla, we understood that if we didn't succeed, we were all out of a job. This ultra-hardcore ethic was found all over the tech and startup world. A bunch of engineers thinking about how to disrupt an industry and make something brand new. And Tesla still was a startup. It had two models, barely. Production was extremely limited, and it was always strapped for cash. And true to the startup ethos, the guy in charge was leading from the front.
He was a very activist manager and he was always there. So it was never managed by edict. There's a lot of back and forth. And I think that helped build a neutral respect between the team and Elon. Do you think that Tesla could have survived and achieved all its achieved sense if it hadn't had that just like nose down ethos at the time? No, no, absolutely not.
To do something like this in the time we had, with the resources that we had and the money we had, there's no other way to do it. Today, Mays describes his time at early Tesla as a blast. It was him and his small team against the world, disrupting an entire industry and even delivering cars to customers themselves. It was exciting. He left for a job at Apple in 2015. A lot of early company veterans were moving on around that time. But multiple people told us that's also when things started to change.
Remember, Tesla was not consistently profitable then. The Model 3 was supposed to fix that by taking EVs mainstream. To do that, the company had to grow fast. Hire tons of people to make a lot of new cars, remake the factory itself, build an entirely new assembly line process. This ended up meaning a lot of chaos, so Tesla doubled down on the strategy that had worked in the past: ultra-hardcore.
And if you didn't want to work six days a week, if you didn't want that, what happened to you? You didn't want. Won't know you. You go work six days or you're going to find you another job. This is how this company was. It was a it was a high turnover rate in this company.
This is Melvin Barry. He worked at Tesla from 2015 to 2016, the very beginning of what was known as the production hell era, retooling the assembly line to make Model 3s. Barry's a car guy. When I met him at his home in Antioch, California, about an hour from Tesla's Fremont factory, he had vintage BMWs in his driveway. When I was growing up, my dad taught me how to fix on cars.
So by me understanding the car nature and just loving automobiles, I was like, oh, yeah, man, let's go. Tesla, let's go. He was so excited to go work at an actual car company. At Tesla, Barry managed a supermarket, an area in the factory that supplied the parts to make the cars. He also has a bachelor's degree in visual communications. He felt like he could be an asset to a car company that was doing cool things. And I loved it until, you know, everything starts shifting.
He applied for a graphic design job he knew he was qualified for and got a dismissive response from his supervisor. That's when the trouble really started. Subtle little remarks, whether it be you're not working fast enough, you guys not working hard enough, or you boys need to hurry up. You boys? Yeah. I'm like, okay. Now, I didn't take it like that because, okay, we're in a hip-hop culture.
OK, you boys. OK. It could be used as a different term. Right. Barry is black. So that comment was alarming. But he wanted to give his manager the benefit of the doubt until things escalated. My supervisor called me to N-Word right in front of other co-workers. And when you hear it, I had to make sure I heard what I heard. I asked him again, what did you say? And he was white. Yeah. And he said it.
So my buddy who was working the battery line on the opposite side of me, he read the supervisor's mouth and he looked at me. He seen my facial expression and he said, did I just hear him call you that? Barry says he confronted his supervisor, but the man denied using the slur. So Barry decided to swallow his pride, avoid a bigger confrontation and take it to HR. But he says they weren't very helpful. So he started documenting every interaction he had.
I'm not trying to get fired and nothing like that because at that point in my life, I'm owning a home. I got a mortgage to pay. I can't rock the boat. Barry says the time he was called a racial epithet wasn't an isolated incident. And when he escalated his complaints, his managers just added to his workload. It's always been two people per supermarket. So now I got to have a whole supermarket by myself where they set me up for failure. So all this is weighing on me.
So now I got to keep a straight face. I got to smile. I got to get that paycheck. What he documented checks out with what we heard from other Tesla workers. There was an atmosphere of fear inside the plant because everything was in service to ultra hardcore, making cars and making them fast. If you got in the way of that or complained about anything, retribution was common. When they look at you, they look down on you like, once again, you're on a plantation.
Eventually, it got to be unbearable. Barry resigned from Tesla in 2016, but was later given a million dollars as part of a settlement. An arbitrator ruled that Barry endured a racially hostile work environment. Barry was far from alone in this experience. A half dozen women have sued Tesla as well, saying superiors did nothing when they were catcalled and groped at work. One woman said she endured racist and homophobic remarks and even had a hot industrial tool thrown at her while she was called the N-word.
Tesla's legal bills have been piling up for years over discrimination cases, and they still are today. Last year, a federal jury awarded another Black former worker $3.2 million after ruling that Tesla failed to prevent severe racial harassment at the plant. Tesla didn't respond to our requests for comments this season. But a post on Tesla's company blog said, "The Tesla of 2015 and 2016 is not the same as the Tesla of today," and that it's added a DEI team and new rules on worker conduct.
However, Tesla may soon face a class action lawsuit from 240 Black factory workers alleging rampant racism. And that's not all. I think it's worth noting that the state of California itself sued Tesla for rampant anti-Black discrimination on behalf of workers, largely at the Fremont factory, but at facilities all across California. And that litigation is still pending. That's Dana Hull, a veteran reporter for Bloomberg who's chronicled the ultra-hardcore ethos and its effects for a long time.
That could come with some pretty hefty fines and back pay, and that could encourage Tesla to kind of clean up its act in terms of HR and processes here in California.
California's lawsuit was filed in 2022, and it's a damning one. It alleges Tesla's factory had swastikas and KKK symbols etched onto bathroom walls and factory machinery, that black workers were frequently assigned to lower-paying, more physically demanding tasks, and that, quote, even after years of complaints, Tesla has continued to deflect and evade responsibility. In a statement online, Tesla called California's lawsuit misguided and said almost 50 past investigations by the state found no misconduct.
But even back in 2017, Musk seemed to feel like he needed to address the critical headlines. He sent an email to employees, subject line, doing the right thing. In it, he basically said, don't be a jerk. Here's AI Elon again. Tesla has to be hardcore, not for the hell of it, but because we are fighting for a good cause. The only way for a little company to prevail against those much larger companies is to work smarter, faster, and harder.
Part of not being a huge jerk is considering how someone might feel who is part of a historically less represented group. In fairness, if someone is a jerk to you but sincerely apologizes, it is important to be thick-skinned and accept that apology. Yeah, not exactly an unequivocal condemnation of racism here. And this tepid scolding isn't even given top billing. The call to hardcore arms is. And the upshot? Being hardcore kind of means getting over it.
How did all this happen? California's lawsuit claims that at one point, Tesla only had 33 HR people to serve about 20,000 workers. One HR rep per 600 plus people. And yes, that's way below the national average. In other words, it seemed like Tesla had different priorities. They would always announce those big targets and they get nailed by their, you know, Wall Street. Like how important at that company was hitting the targets? Extreme. Extreme. Well...
You'll be working six days, one day off, just to meet that target because he didn't promise somebody, "Oh yeah, we're going to do these many cars by this date." California's regulators have looked into Tesla many times over the years. The state's got some of the toughest worker protections in the country. Now, the state didn't always find something wrong with how Tesla was operating. But one big safety investigation revealed Tesla omitted hundreds of injuries in its reports to the state during the Model 3 ramp-up.
Dennis Duran got a front row seat to all of that. He started working for Tesla in 2014. Someone basically fainted from being dehydrated and they fainted and threw up all over the floor.
So I feel like dehydration is probably the number one thing. And then there was the burst sewage pipe. We couldn't believe that it was almost like past our feet, the sewage. And we even asked, are we going to shut it down? This is ridiculous. Like, no, no, you guys are fine.
And then there was the fire.
All of a sudden, flames from the prime booth started and our two workers started bolting out. And they're like, there's a fire. And then it moved really quick. Basically, that whole area was in flames. But the answer for managers was always the same. Get back to work. Make the cars. Meeting targets is all that matters.
They're insane. We're not pushing no cars. The firemen still haven't came. They need to inspect everything and see what caused the fire. It's still dangerous. It smells really bad in here. You might be thinking, is this unusual? Well, car factories are dangerous places, but Tesla was different. A Forbes investigation revealed the Fremont plant had three times as many OSHA safety violations as 10 other U.S. car factories put together.
Training periods were shorter than the national average and injuries were higher too. And that's just what we know about.
Between 2018 and 2020, news outlets including Reveal, Bloomberg and USA Today found that Tesla repeatedly misclassified and underreported injuries in California and Nevada. More recently, Tesla has said it's accelerating its safety culture, that it's expanded a bunch of safety programs and also collaborated with other automakers on best practices. But it's also worth noting that unlike the other American automakers, Tesla's not unionized. So workers have less recourse if something happens to them and they can't go on strike.
The nuclear option for any union. Workers at Tesla have tried to organize before, but Musk has clamped down hard on that. He's even been forced by the federal government to delete a tweet seen as a union-busting threat. Dennis Duran got involved in the organizing efforts. They contacted me and told me that, um,
Elon was trying to let go of any pro-union people and they were going to have a big let go pretty soon, like a thousand. So I was like, you might be for sure one of them because you're like the main one for paint. So they fought unionization pretty hard. Pretty, pretty hard, pretty fast. Yeah. Despite all of this, Tesla was always seen as a positive thing for California. The last car factory the state had left a huge employer there. But Tesla's relationship with California was about to sour.
Heading into 2020, Tesla had a ton of momentum. It was coming off a record-breaking sales year, it started making cars in China, and it had new stuff like the Model Y crossover and the Cybertruck up its sleeve. Sure, there were all the controversies, but much of Tesla's press was positive. The future felt like it could be stable and bright.
But as it did for everyone, that year had other plans in mind. Across the country, officials putting drastic measures in place to fight this pandemic. Here's what we know right now. The entire state of California ordered to stay at home. That's 40 million people. COVID couldn't have come at a worse time for Tesla. It needed to get the Model Y built. It was destined to be Tesla's cash cow. By late January, Tesla's other factory in China had already shut down under government orders. Those aren't people you get to say no to.
Musk couldn't afford to lose Fremont as well. It was the only other factory making cars. If it shut down, Tesla was probably toast. A decade of hard work down the drain. So he did what he always does when things got tough.
He tweeted. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, a new infectious disease expert, weighing in here on the coronavirus this afternoon, tweeting, the coronavirus panic is dumb. But workers inside the plant were already getting sick. In my line, I saw four or five people out for at least a week, which is not normal, right? But a whole week...
out to me was kind of normal. This is Carlos Gabriel. He worked at Tesla in 2020 and personally experienced Musk's approach to COVID. I saw there was no soap in the bathroom for weeks and there were no sanitation stations. There was nothing happening with regards to COVID. The only thing he ever took over as a serious virus publicly. But Gabriel knew the price of speaking out. You also have a strong sense of a very cultish type of culture where you couldn't criticize anything because Elon Musk is God.
All of this was bigger than Musk and Tesla, though. California itself was shutting down. The governor issued a stay-at-home order around mid-March. It was hugely controversial. California was the first state to do this, and the restrictions ended up being some of the toughest in the country. Bay Area counties began ordering non-essential businesses to shut down, including, after a lot of back and forth, Tesla's Fremont factory. Musk, of course, wasn't having that. He eventually shuts down. He's starting to fight it a little bit. It was more than just a little bit.
Sean Wilson is the chief of staff to the Alameda County supervisor, the top county elected official. His government affairs director at the time was very, very vocal, very tenacious in their emails to us saying, hey, there's got to be something you can do. This is an essential business. A Tesla versus the government cage match over COVID was already taking shape.
Because despite the lockdown orders, Musk kept his factory open. He said he'd be showing up every day and employees could stay home if they wanted. But many of them believe there might be consequences if they did. The company employees, they would send me emails. They were split on it. A lot of them were actually fearful and felt intimidated that, you know, they were being asked to do something that they didn't feel safe in doing. But fearful of the fact that since they didn't have union protections, if they didn't, you know, maybe they wouldn't have a job waiting for them on Monday morning.
On March 19th, Musk finally agreed to shut the factory down. Maybe he had no choice. Cases were getting really bad in America by then. Criticism was mounting, the rest of the U.S. auto industry was shutting down, and the county wasn't buying Tesla's essential business argument. But he spent the next few weeks ranting about the virus and lockdowns on Twitter and wherever else he could, like this investor call. To say that they cannot leave their house and they will be arrested if they do,
This is fascist. This is not freedom. Give people back their goddamn freedom. And he infamously downplayed the threat on the Joe Rogan podcast. Objectively, the mortality is much lower. The factor of 10 may be a factor of 50 lower than initially thought. This is not true. Did he sincerely believe this stuff? Or did he just want his factory to stay open?
In the end, it didn't matter. Musk had become the poster boy for COVID denialism and getting America back to work. For him in particular. By May, Musk had really had enough. Tesla sued Alameda County to reopen the factory, and he threatened on Twitter that he might move the whole operation to Texas or Nevada. The county was in a tough spot. It had had a good relationship with Tesla until then, and Tesla was a huge employer in the area. What if it did pack up and leave?
Alameda County's Sean Wilson. Of course, they didn't want to piss him off. But at the same time, you know, they couldn't do for one and not do for other businesses. And I think they erred on the side of caution with respect to the numbers and everything we were going through at the time.
On May 11th, Musk made the call for them. He reopened the factory. He tweeted, Tesla is restarting production today against Alameda County rules. I will be on the line with everyone else. If anyone is arrested, I ask that it only be me. That proclamation turned the political tide because up to that point, there was elected officials that were thinking that, hey,
Let's open them up. Let's let's allow them to do some things inside the facility and when he said, you know, go take a walk off a shore pier I think he basically pissed off those that were on his side, you know and
it turned the tide. It made folks think, well, wait, wait a minute. You just can't arbitrarily make this decision unilaterally. Was there ever talk in the county of like, all right, we'll send the sheriff out there to arrest him. We'll shut it down. I remember distinctly there was discussions on whose jurisdiction this was. Well, is it going to be Fremont PD or is it going to be Alameda County Sheriff? Law enforcement never showed up. Musk got to open his factory, make his cars and not face any consequences. He dropped his lawsuit against the county a few days later.
Meanwhile, workers say they faced haphazard new safety measures. Hundreds got COVID, and many couldn't even return to work. You know, many employees had told me that, you know, I can't go back to work because my child is sick or my partner is immunity jeopardized or whatnot. Tesla didn't talk to us about this either. But a statement from that summer said reports that Tesla fired employees for raising safety concerns were not true and that its safety measures in the plant met or exceeded government rules.
The company also said that it waived its attendance policy when it first reopened and provided two weeks of paid leave for workers with at-risk family members. So the world was on pause, but Tesla clearly wasn't. Neither were its plans to expand. The Fremont factory was getting old, and Tesla needed room to grow it couldn't get in the Bay Area. By July, Tesla had selected Austin, Texas as the site of its next car factory. But then, Musk took things to a whole new level. I'm excited to announce that we're moving our headquarters to Austin, Texas.
Not just a factory, a headquarters. This, after Musk chicken-raced the government, got everything he wanted, and faced zero consequences. He made clear that the Fremont factory would stay open. But the future, according to him, was a place with a lot less red tape. I
I loved living in California, but the problem is you cannot get things done. Ask anyone, how long would it take you to get the approval to proceed? Two years and you're doing well. The reaction at the time was not very positive. It was surprising that he would go through that type of draconian measure to prove a point. Here's Sean Wilson from the county again. I mean, I get regulations in California are tough. I totally understand that. But, you know, to do that and to say that and to actually do it,
I mean, it was like, yeah, it was like a slap in your face. After you had a good relationship. We had a good relationship. We were on good terms prior to the COVID issue. But so the fact that he actually threatened and did it, that was a little, it was kind of fucked up. In the end, when it came down to choosing between the health and safety of his workers or going ultra hardcore to make cars and profits happen, Musk chose the latter.
Coming up, Tesla takes its talents to Texas, a state fit for a renegade. I mean, I still feel like Texas is kind of like the Wild West, where it's like business before labor rights. I mean, that's kind of what the state is known for.
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On September 28th, the Global Citizen Festival will gather thousands of people who took action to end extreme poverty. Watch Post Malone, Doja Cat, Lisa, Jelly Roll, and Raul Alejandro as they take the stage with world leaders and activists to defeat poverty, defend the planet, and demand equity. Download the Global Citizen app to watch live. Learn more at globalcitizen.org.com.
There's a saying that's famous in Texas, which is where I'm from. Davy Crockett said it. Before he moved to the Lone Star State, he told his enemies something you still find today on T-shirts, coffee mugs, and of course, in country music songs. ♪ You can go to hell or on to Texas ♪ And that's basically what Musk said too. He had already been moving parts of his empire down there for years, like SpaceX. Now Tesla HQ would be joining that empire, and everything's bigger in Texas. ♪
If you put the building on its side, it's taller than the Burj Khalifa. It's equivalent to three pentagons. So when a building is measured in units of pentagon, you know, it's quite large. That's Giga Texas, a giant state-of-the-art new car factory and Tesla's world headquarters. The size of 100 football fields just southeast of Austin, all to make the Model Y and Cybertruck.
It's already cranking out thousands of cars a week and is growing fast. It's a huge get for Austin, even with all the growth that area has seen in recent years from companies like Meta and Amazon and Apple expanding there. More than 10,000 new jobs and a new manufacturing ecosystem for generations to come. This is by far the largest thing that Travis County has seen for a long time, and I've
believe there was a moratorium on incentive agreements before Tesla came that the previous commissioners court lifted to work it out with them. So
You know, it's a big deal for Travis County. That's Andy Brown, the county judge. He's the top elected official in Travis County, where Austin's located. But Tesla already had a long list of worker violations when it got to Texas. Was it going to be the same story in Travis County? We really did get started back in 2020 because we know about Tesla's history when it comes to worker safety violations. That's Hannah Alexander, a staff attorney with the Workers' Defense Project, a nonprofit group that advocates for workers across the state.
And then, lo and behold, workers started coming to us saying, hey, I worked on this project. I was working like 75 hours a week. I, you know, wasn't getting paid properly. Construction workers who helped build Tesla's billion dollar gigafactory say they were underpaid and in some cases not paid at all.
Tesla hired thousands of construction workers over the past two years to build the massive factory in southeast Travis County. But now we're starting to hear more and more allegations of unsafe conditions and labor violations during that construction.
The U.S. Department of Labor already has a list of complaints from Giga Texas construction workers. Those include a lack of safety training, a lack of masks for people working on smoke-blowing turbines, and tons of risks. Like workers being ordered to keep building a floor that had been flooded but still had live wires everywhere. Sound familiar? Even worse, the Texas Observer recently reported one worker died of overheating at Giga Texas in 2021. His cause of death wasn't even correctly reported to the county at first.
Now, the construction workers at Giga Texas were hired by contractors and subcontractors. They weren't Tesla employees. Not a new defense there. But when Musk brags about getting the place built in record time with little red tape, this is what he means. Texas is the only state in the U.S. that doesn't require workers' compensation for construction.
construction workers. And so if an employer does do workers' compensation, it generally means that they don't have to worry about personal injury lawsuits from workers who are injured. In a lot of ways, Texas is the perfect place for ultra-hardcore to blossom, to reach its final form. The state loves to tout how much growth it's had from other places in America, from companies seeking lower taxes and fewer regulations that red tape Musk hates so much.
It's something state leaders like Governor Greg Abbott love to hype up. This has turned into an absolute tidal wave. They are looking for a state that gives them the independence, the autonomy and the freedom to chart their own course. But to others, fewer regulations just means less safe. A construction worker in Texas dies every three days. And a lot of that is...
due to a lack of regulations. Now, Austin's a pretty liberal place by Texas standards. Along with the barbecue, it's kind of famous for this. Anybody doing business here in Travis County has to know that we are very pro-labor, very pro-worker, and that means having safe workplaces, fair wages, environmental protection. That's something we take very seriously here. But while Judge Brown says Travis County doesn't plan on letting safety go by the wayside, the state of Texas may overrule him.
There's a new state law that makes it much harder for local governments to craft their own business regulations, which means even if Travis County wanted to, it would have a lot less power to crack down on Tesla if things get bad. It's tough to know exactly how Tesla in Texas will play out for factory workers. The place is still very new, and Tesla has repeatedly insisted that it's improved the safety inside its plants.
Then again, even some investors aren't convinced. I would love to say that things have gotten better. And what we're hearing from employees is that they haven't. That's Kristen Hull. She's the founder and CEO at Nia Impact Capital, an investor group led by women with a social mission and a large stake in Tesla. We've been watching Tesla early on since it was a privately held company and really interested in the solutions.
Everything from the EVs that they're very well known for all the way to that battery play, as well as the evolution to including solar.
But they and some other investors have loudly been pushing Musk to get his act together. Earlier this year, that group, which collectively holds about $1.5 billion in Tesla shares, did something unprecedented. They wrote an open letter to Tesla board members demanding they rein Musk in. I've heard that repeatedly from workers we've talked to on the factory line. It's ultimately a feeling that workforce is disposable and you can tear through employees and rehire almost. Like, where does that mentality come from? Right.
Right. It comes from the top. That's where the tone is set at the top in all of these companies. In the letter, the investors call out Tesla's board for weak oversight of Musk and the company's approach to labor and human rights. They say this lack of supervision exposes the company to all kinds of risk, legal, operational, reputational. And the letter specifically calls out, quote, a toxic culture at Tesla factories.
They're mad about the racial and sexual harassment lawsuits piling up, the accusations of union busting, the safety complaints and wage theft allegations at Giga Texas. Basically everything we've been talking about in this episode. What would you say to those folks that say the way they've acted is necessary to how they've disrupted things?
Oh, no, that's completely false. No, it's not necessary at all. You can move fast and you can move thoughtfully. Hull says not doing so is costing Tesla a lot, meaning actual costs, something any investor would be mad about. The investor letter said a Tesla worker is almost four times as likely to quit as a Ford worker and that costs associated with turnover are through the roof.
And Hull fears this could cut into Tesla's leadership in the EV race. Over the past few years, Tesla's lost key executives and employees in many areas. Self-driving, artificial intelligence, production, legal affairs, batteries. Many of them are seeking a better work-life balance, and many have gone to direct competitors.
Being more intentional and more thoughtful about treatment of employees is what's going to bring that loyalty so that they can create the next thing or get all of these cars to market faster or work on that battery play. Whatever it is, that loyal employee base is really something important to nurture.
It's possible Tesla really did have to be ultra-hardcore in the early years to become the market leader in electric cars. But now it has 130,000 employees. It's the world's biggest producer of EVs. And by some measures, makes the best-selling car in the world in the Model Y. Does it still have to be this way? And there's a larger, almost philosophical point here. It's about that goal that Tesla's always had: of helping to save the world.
I would say most of the investors are really asking, who are we saving it for? We need to have people and planet thrive together. And those employees creating the cars, working on the cars, those are all the people too.
Next time on Land of the Giants, Tesla's also been hardcore about self-driving cars. I really would consider autonomous driving to be basically a solved problem. Like a Model S and Model X at this point can drive autonomously with greater safety than a person right now. But how good is the technology really?
At no point during the marketing and sale of these vehicles was Tesla even remotely close to having a vehicle that was going to be fully self-driving. And that's true today. You shouldn't be having the American public be guinea pigs for you. We take a look at Tesla's broken promises and which companies are really ahead in the race to full autonomy.
This episode included clips from The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Good Morning America, Yahoo Finance, Fox Business, The Joe Rogan Podcast, CNET, The Kilowatts, KVUE Texas, CNBC, and music from Lonnie Spiker. Land of the Giants, The Tesla Shockwave is a Vox Media Podcast Network production in partnership with our colleagues at The Verge. This episode was produced by me, Patrick George, and Zach Mack, our showrunner and senior producer.
Special thanks to Jelani Carter. Charlotte Silver is our producer. Jolie Myers is our editor. Claire Cronin is our fact checker. Brandon McFarlane mixed and scored this episode. Andy Hawkins is transportation editor at The Verge. Nishat Kurwa is our executive producer. Tamara Warren is our co-host. And I'm Patrick George. If you like this episode, give us a follow and tell a friend. And follow us to hear our next episode when it drops.