• Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he slept on the floor of the company’s vehicle-assembly plant because he wanted to suffer more than any other employee during the troubled production ramp-up for the Model 3 sedan, Bloomberg reported.
  • Musk also told Bloomberg that at one point he wore the same clothes for five consecutive days.
  • Other media outlets have reported that Musk has slept under his desk and on a couch at the plant in Fremont, California, as the company faced what Musk called “production hell” for the Model 3.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he slept on the floor of the company’s vehicle-assembly plant in Fremont, California, because he wanted to suffer more than any other employee during the troubled production ramp-up for the Model 3 sedan, Bloomberg reported Thursday.

“I feel like I have a great debt to the people of Tesla,” Musk told Bloomberg. “The reason I slept on the floor was not because I couldn’t go across the road and be at a hotel. It was because I wanted my circumstances to be worse than anyone else at the company. Whenever they felt pain, I wanted mine to be worse.”

Musk also told Bloomberg that at one point he wore the same clothes for five consecutive days, and he compared circumstances at Tesla with those at General Motors, where he said executives used a designated elevator to avoid contact with other employees.

“Typical Elon, deflecting from the real issue, which is the ability to mass-produce at scale and with quality,” a GM representative told Bloomberg.

Other media outlets have reported that Musk has slept under his desk and on a couch at the Fremont plant this year as the company faced what Musk called "production hell" for the Model 3.

Tesla struggled to ramp up production for the Model 3 since it launched last July, twice missing deadlines for its goal of producing 5,000 a week.

In May 2016, Musk said he estimated the company would make 100,000 to 200,000 Model 3s during the second half of 2017. Tesla made 2,685 Model 3 vehicles in 2017.

On July 2, the company said it made 5,031 Model 3s during the final week of June and 28,578 during the second quarter, more than it had made in the prior three quarters combined.

Read Bloomberg's full story »

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