Tesla is just not making cars in China but also generating employment. A day after Tesla announced that it has been granted permission to start mass production of its vehicles in China, the company also said it is ramping up hiring in its Shanghai plant.
The electric carmaker in the past month has added than 100 jobs. Tesla's jobs in China rose 33% from 355 to 474 last month. This is a clear indication that Elon Musk's company has elaborate plans for its Shanghai plant. The job additions are in a bid to ramp up production in its Shanghai facility, where the company has already started testing its Model 3 sedans.
Tesla is among those U.S. companies that reduced job postings, or instead stopped creating jobs in China, during the early phase of trade war. This was mainly because Musk had long been a supporter of President Donald Trump, who has been an advocate of US companies to move jobs back from China during the initial phase of trade war.
Much like other big US companies such as Nvidia, Nike and Micron Technologies having a strong presence in China, Tesla too almost stopped creating jobs in China. However, the new job additions indicate at two things. First, Tesla is treating Gigafactory 3 at Shanghai as one of its most important facilities and second, it too is expecting trade disputes getting resolved in the near term.
Tesla on fast track
The company's recent announcement to launch its Gigafactory 4 at Berlin, too will lead to a creation of jobs in Europe. However, Tesla's move to hire more workers in China and Germany hasn't adversely affected its U.S. jobs. Tesla's hiring in the United States has been on the rise since June.
Interestingly, hiring in Tesla's U.S. facilities had been on a decline even six months back. Understandably, Tesla has made quite a few aggressive moves in the last few weeks. This has particularly been evident since the company returned to profits after suffering for several quarters both on revenues and production.
The electric carmaker last week unveiled its Made-in-China Model 3 and is likely to start sales by the end of this year. Production at the company's Shanghai unit started in record time in November given that it broke ground for the new factory only in January.
A couple of days after launching its Made-in-China version of Model 3 sedan, Tesla announced its fourth Gigafactory in Berlin. Needless to say, Elon Musk is firing all cylinders in a bid to capture a larger pie of the electric vehicle market.
