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Tesla is halting production at its Germany and China factories for weeks at a time to accommodate upgrade work following a disappointing quarter of deliveries

Tesla Model 3 vehicles queued up at the carmaker's factory in Shanghai, China.
Tesla Model 3 vehicles at the company's factory in Shanghai, China. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo

  • Tesla's Shanghai and Berlin sites will shut for weeks at a time in July and August, Bloomberg and TeslaMag reported.
  • The pauses have been put in place to accommodate upgrade work in order to boost the sites' output.
  • Shanghai's COVID-19 lockdown contributed to Tesla's recent disappointing quarter of deliveries.
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Tesla is halting production at its Shanghai and Berlin plants for weeks in July and August in order for the sites to undergo upgrade work designed to boost their output,  Bloomberg and German site TeslaMag reported. 

The Shanghai plant's Model Y assembly line will be paused for the first two weeks of July, reported Bloomberg, which cited sources familiar with the matter. The site's Model 3 line will stop for 20 days starting July 18. per Bloomberg. The Berlin plant will be offline for two weeks starting July 11, according to TeslaMag, and will aim to double its production rate from August.

Tesla didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

The news comes as the automaker produced more vehicles than ever in June, even though it missed analyst estimates for quarterly deliveries — ending a two-year streak of quarter-on-quarter delivery gains. T

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esla cited "ongoing supply challenges and factory shutdowns beyond our control" in its delivery and production update. Tesla's Shanghai Gigafactory, responsible for half of its global production last year, has been severely disrupted by COVID-19 lockdowns in recent months.

Tesla stock dropped 38% in the three months to June, the biggest quarterly decline since its IPO in 2010.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has previously described the factories as "money furnaces," with its Austin and Berlin Gigafactories facing difficulties in ramping up production.

"Berlin and Austin are losing billions of dollars right now because there's a ton of expense and hardly any output," Musk told the Tesla Owners of Silicon Valley club in an interview in May. "Getting Berlin and Austin functional and getting Shanghai back in the saddle fully are overwhelmingly our concern."

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Musk said in June that Tesla intended to pause hiring and lay off 10% of its salaried workforce, or 3.5% of its global headcount, over because he had a "super bad feeling" about the economy.

Tesla Elon Musk Electric Vehicles
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