Some good reporting from the Wall Street Journal.
Elon Musk made big promises to Wall Street about Tesla’s new Model Y SUV in 2022, and the company was ramping up its production in Austin, Texas, when environmental problems threatened to derail his plans.
The door to the plant’s giant casting furnace, which melts metal to be molded into the Model Y’s parts, wouldn’t shut, spewing toxins into the air and raising temperatures for workers on the floor to as high as 100 degrees. Hazardous wastewater from production—containing paint, oil and other chemicals—was also flowing untreated into the city’s sewer, in violation of state guidelines.
Tesla left the costly problems largely unaddressed during the critical ramp-up. As a result, the company’s 10 million-plus square foot plant—among the largest car factories in the world—dumped toxic pollutants into the environment near Austin for months.
This account of the Austin plant’s environmental problems, which haven’t been reported previously, comes from emails between Texas regulators and the company obtained by The Wall Street Journal in response to public-records requests, as well as interviews with former employees and other documents, including a memo sent by a whistleblower to the Environmental Protection Agency.
A Journal investigation shows that Tesla bosses were aware of the problems but sometimes chose short-term fixes to avoid slowing production. Former employees said they feared they might lose their job if they drew attention internally to potential environmental hazards, because senior managers didn’t consider such issues to be mission critical. As head of the company, Musk set the tone, these people said, pushing employees to move fast and complaining frequently in public statements that unnecessary regulations are strangling the U.S.
The world’s richest man now has an even bigger megaphone. Musk, who aligned himself closely with President-elect Donald Trump during his campaign, was named Nov. 12 as co-head of a new Department of Government Efficiency, or “DOGE.” Musk has said he thinks he can chop “at least $2 trillion” from the federal budget, including by cutting government jobs at regulatory agencies. How that will play out for the EPA is unclear, but some people who have worked with him for years expect that Musk will attempt to curb environmental regulations—including those that affect his companies.
[…]
Complying with environmental rules isn’t usually the top priority for Tesla management, people familiar with the company’s officials said. Tesla brought to the auto industry a Silicon Valley ethos to move fast and break things, and Musk views regulations as a hindrance to innovation because they slow down the work, the people said.
At the factory in Austin, managers sometimes ignored workers who raised warnings about environmental issues, former employees say. Some employees feared they would be fired if they slowed down production.
One environmental-compliance staffer in the Austin plant claimed that “Tesla repeatedly asked me to lie to the government so that they could operate without paying for proper environmental controls,” according to a 2024 memo from the employee to the EPA that was reviewed by the Journal.
That’s from Thanksgiving week, but as we know Eldon is always in the news, so such minor concerns like “time” needn’t bother us. There’s more to this, so read the rest. The TL;dr is:
1. Across all of his companies, Elmore doesn’t give a shit about complying with environmental laws and regulations, and now he’s in a position to weaken those protections for the benefit of his companies.
2. It’s hard for me to see at this point who can hold this asshole accountable for anything. But at least given the current H1B visa kerfuffle, maybe he can be distracted by his own messes. For what that’s worth.
3. Don’t buy a Tesla. There are plenty of other EV options out there.
Hope that helps.
Musk thinks Americans who disagree with him are retarded. I wonder how many people who read this blog own a Tesla?
‘ “So basically the right split into two factions, tech right and right right, and the tech right is like ‘hey we need h-1b visa people to do the jobs,’ and the right right was like ‘no you need to hire americans,’ and the tech right is like ‘but you guys are retarded,’ and the right right is like ‘well you don’t train us,’ and the tech right is like ‘you can’t outtrain being retarded,’ and while all this was going on we learned some people *really* don’t like Indians.”