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- Tesla CEO Elon Musk said it once had to stop production because it ran out of USB cables.
- The company had to raid "every electronics store in the Bay Area" to buy USB cables, he said.
- Musk also spoke about the difficulty of scaling up production from prototypes.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
Tesla has had its fair share of supply shortages and production problems in its time.
CEO Elon Musk said during its earnings call Monday that USB cables, which can be used to plug your phone into a car, once halted production.
"At one point for the Model S … we literally raided every electronics store in the Bay Area for a few days there," Musk said.
"Nobody could buy a USB cable in the Bay Area, because we went and bought them all to put them in the car."
Musk also talked about how "insanely hard" it is to scale up production from prototypes, which he called "child's play."
To scale up Tesla's operations without going bankrupt, Musk said that he and many others at Tesla "had to basically have several aneurysms."
He added that Tesla's logistics system "makes World War II look trivial." He said the global chip shortage, port delays, and COVID-19 restrictions in China had all impacted Tesla's production.
During the call, Tesla announced revenue of $10.39 billion for the first three months of 2021. This is slightly lower than the previous quarter, but 74% up on the same period in 2020.
The automaker also revealed it had a $101 million profit from its bitcoin investment after selling around 10% of its holdings in the cryptocurrency during the quarter.
Tesla sold a record 184,800 vehicles in the quarter, and said that it saw strong demand after it launched sales of its Shanghai-made Model Y in January. In the call, Musk said among other things, that its Model Y SUV would "quite likely" become the world's best-selling car next year.
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