News
Tesla factory workers intensify unionization efforts, file charges with National Labor Board
Tesla has dismissed charges filed by the Unfair Labor Practice with the National Labor Relations Board by two employees as “entirely without merit,” stating that it will respond to the allegations as part of the NLRB process.
In the latest chapter of the fight to unionize the Tesla Fremont factory, the United Autoworkers Union is again attempting to sway employees to the cause by filing an unfair labor practice charge, alleging illegal surveillance, coercion, intimidation and prevention of worker communications by Tesla in an effort to prevent or otherwise hinder unionization of the Fremont factory.
In response to past attempts by the UAW to influence workers at the Fremont factory to form a union, Tesla CEO Elon Musk made his pitch to employees against unionization in a letter to employees where he extolled the benefits Tesla was already providing without a union. The basis behind his argument hinged largely on the valuation of Tesla stock issued to employees and the subsequent increase in price of that stock.
Tesla was called to task in the charges for what is being characterized as an overly broad confidentiality agreement. Tesla has always operated more like a Silicon Valley technology company than a car manufacturer, and its company policy on confidentiality reflects that of technology companies that produce highly competitive, industry shifting tech that are often bound by strict deadlines.
In the midst of leading the disruption of several industries, while making headlines for every move the company makes, it comes as no surprise that Tesla opted for an overly broad confidentiality agreement. However, the confidentiality agreement was deemed to be so broad that the company was contacted by five members of the California legislature and a number of organizations in the Bay Area in a request to loosen up wording of the agreement and ensure it did not infringe upon employee rights. According to a report by Capital and Main, the statement currently includes language requiring confidentiality in relation to “everything that you work on, learn about or observe in your work about Tesla.”
The new charges also call out Tesla for alleged violations in several specific areas, one of which was preventing the distribution of flyers by employees at shift change on company property. After several workers handed out literature about unionization at the factory in February, Tesla fired back with a new policy stating that workers “were not allowed to pass out any literature unless it was pre-approved by the Employer.” The charges make a plea that employees should have the right to bring up issues and to talk about them amongst themselves as a means of driving towards resolution.
The charges will be reviewed by the NLRB which will make a determination after gathering input from all parties involved.
These charges highlight the challenge Tesla faces as it seeks to ramp up factory operations as part of the Model 3 production ramp. With all hands on deck to deliver Model 3, Tesla has its work cut out for it as it seeks to balance the rights, needs and morale of its employees with the needs of the business.
Here’s the full text of Musk’s company wide email that was published by TechCrunch in February that discusses unionization efforts taking place at the factory. We’ve also obtained a copy of Tesla’s confidentiality agreement to employees which we’ve embedded below.
For Tesla to become and remain one of the great companies of the 21st century, we must have an environment that is as safe, fair and fun as possible. It is incredibly important to me that you look forward to coming to work every day. For that, we must be a fair and just company – the only kind worth creating.
This is vital to succeed in our mission to accelerate the advent of a clean, sustainable energy future. The forces arrayed against us are many and incredibly powerful. This is David vs Goliath if David were six inches tall! Only by being smarter, faster and working well as a tightly integrated team do we have any chance of success. We should never forget the history of car startups originating in the United States: dozens have gone bankrupt and only two, Tesla and Ford, have not. Despite the odds being strongly against us, my faith in you is why I am confident that we will succeed.
That is why I was so distraught when I read the recent blog post promoting the UAW, which does not share our mission and whose true allegiance is to the giant car companies, where the money they take from employees in dues is vastly more than they could ever make from Tesla.
The tactics they have resorted to are disingenuous or outright false. I will address their underhanded attacks below. While this discussion focuses on Fremont, these same principles apply to every Tesla facility worldwide.
Safety First
The workplace issue that comes before any other is safety. If you do not have your health, then nothing else matters. Simply due to size and bad luck, there will always be some injuries in a company with over 30,000 employees, but our goal is simple: to have as close to zero injuries as possible and be the safest factory in the auto industry by far. The Tesla executive team and I are absolutely committed to this goal.
That is why I was particularly troubled by the safety claim in last week’s blog post, which said: “A few months ago, six out of eight people in my work team were out on medical leave at the same time due to various work-related injuries. I hear the ergonomics are even more severe in other areas of the factory.”
Obviously, this cannot be true: if three quarters of his team suddenly went on medical leave, we would not be able to operate that part of the factory. Furthermore, if things were really even worse in other departments, that would mean something like 80% or more of the factory would be out on injury, production would drop to virtually nothing and the parking lot would be almost empty. As you know firsthand, we have the *opposite* problem – there is never enough room to park! In fact, we are working at top speed to build more parking. Also, hopefully our darn BART train station will open before all hell freezes over!
After looking into this claim, not only was it untrue for this individual’s team, it was untrue for any of the hundreds of teams in the factory.
That said, reducing excess overtime and improving safety are extremely important. This is why we hired thousands of additional team members to create a third shift, which has reduced the burden on everyone. Moreover, since the beginning of Tesla production at Fremont five years ago, there have been dedicated health and safety experts covering the factory and we hold regular safety meetings with operations leaders. Since the majority of the injuries in the factory are ergonomic in nature, we have an ergonomics department focused exclusively on this issue.
The net result is that since January 1st, our total recordable incident rate (TRIR) is under 3.3, which is less than half the industry average of 6.7.
Of course, the goal is to have as close to zero injuries as humanly possible, so we need to keep improving. If you have a safety concern or an idea on how to make things better, please let your manager, safety representative or HR partner know. You can also send an anonymous note through the Integrity Hotline (this applies broadly to any problems you notice at our company) or you can email safety@tesla.com.
Compensation
At Tesla, we believe it is important for everyone to be an owner of the company. This is your company. That is why, unlike other car companies, everyone is awarded shares and you get to buy stock at a discount compared to the public through the employee stock purchase program. Last year, stock equity grants were increased significantly and it will happen again later this year once Model 3 achieves high volume.
The chart below contrasts the total comp received by a Tesla production team member who started on January 1, 2013 against the total comp received over the same period at GM, Ford, and Fiat Chrysler. A four year period is used because that’s the vesting length of a new hire equity grant. I believe the equity gain over the next four years will be similar. As shown below, a Tesla team member earned between $70,000 and $100,000 more in total compensation than the employees at other US auto companies!
Work Hours
Another issue raised in the UAW blog was hours worked. First, I want to recognize how hard you worked to make our company successful. Those hours mattered to you, to your family and to our company, and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate them.
However, the pace needs to be sustainable. This is why the third shift was established and why we created alternate work schedules based on feedback from various teams in the factory.
These changes have had a big impact. The average amount of hours worked by production team members this year is about 43 hours per week. The percentage of overtime hours has declined by almost 50% since the super tough time we had last year achieving rate on the Model X, which is probably the hardest car to build in history. What an amazing accomplishment! It is also a lesson learned, which is why Model 3 is designed to be dramatically easier to manufacture.
Fun
As we get closer to being a profitable company, we will be able to afford more and more fun things. For example, as I mentioned at the last company talk, we are going to hold a really amazing party once Model 3 reaches volume production later this year. There will also be little things that come along like free frozen yogurt stands scattered around the factory and my personal favorite: a Tesla electric pod car roller coaster (with an optional loop the loop route, of course!) that will allow fast and fun travel throughout our Fremont campus, dipping in and out of the factory and connecting all the parking lots. It’s going to get crazy good ?
Thanks again for all your effort and I look forward to working alongside you to create an amazing future!
Elon
[pdf-embedder url=”http://www.teslarati.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Tesla-Employee-Confidentiality-Agreement.pdf”]
Cybertruck
Tesla Cybertruck too safe for even Musk’s biggest critics to ignore
Krassenstein’s decision reveals that superior safety isn’t a partisan issue. For parents prioritizing family protection over personal or political grudges, the Cybertruck has become too safe to ignore.
The Tesla Cybertruck is an extremely polarizing vehicle because of its potential symbolism as a political stance instead of just a pickup truck — or at least that is what many would want you to believe.
Of course, the Cybertruck is an icon of Tesla culture, and it is one of those things that never has a middle ground: you love it, or you don’t.
But maybe there is an establishment of that “grey area” happening.
In a striking illustration of engineering triumph over political tribalism, prominent Elon Musk critic Brian Krassenstein has purchased a Tesla Cybertruck, openly citing its exceptional safety as the deciding factor for his family.
The announcement on X triggered predictable backlash, yet it underscores a growing reality: the Cybertruck’s safety credentials are proving impossible for even Musk’s fiercest detractors to dismiss.
I might get hate for this too but I bought a Cybertruck.
With a young family, safety was important and so is not polluting the atmosphere with $5 a gallon gasoline. pic.twitter.com/XJqFqR6O9r
— Brian Krassenstein (@krassenstein) May 6, 2026
Krassenstein, who has repeatedly clashed with Musk over issues ranging from content moderation and “wokeness” to public health figures, made no attempt to hide his reservations. In his May 6 post, he acknowledged the coming criticism: “I might get hate for this too but I bought a Cybertruck.”
He stressed that the decision had “nothing to do with Elon or politics,” pointing instead to practical advantages—his existing Tesla charger, eligibility for Full Self-Driving upgrades, a returning-owner discount, and crucially, the vehicle’s strong safety profile.
With gasoline prices hovering near $5 a gallon in some areas, he also highlighted the environmental benefit of switching from a polluting combustion engine.
The numbers, data, and awards validate Krassenstein’s choice.
The 2025 Cybertruck earned the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s (IIHS) elite Top Safety Pick+ award—the only pickup truck to achieve this highest rating. It delivered “Good” scores across every crashworthiness category, including the challenging updated moderate overlap front crash test, while excelling in crash avoidance and mitigation systems.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) awarded it a perfect 5-star overall rating, with top marks in frontal, side, and rollover categories. No other pickup truck holds both distinctions simultaneously.
Tesla Cybertruck crash test rating situation revealed by NHTSA, IIHS
Beyond lab results, the Cybertruck’s stainless-steel exoskeleton and ultra-rigid structure have demonstrated remarkable real-world resilience. Owners have reported surviving high-speed collisions with minimal cabin intrusion.
In one widely discussed incident, a Cybertruck endured a 70 mph sideswipe on the interstate; the driver reported barely feeling the impact while the other vehicle was heavily damaged.
Tesla’s crash demonstrations and independent analyses consistently show how the vehicle’s design prioritizes occupant protection through a fortified passenger cell rather than traditional crumple zones, giving families superior safeguarding in many common crash scenarios.
The online pile-on following Krassenstein’s post focused on aesthetics, politics, and perceived hypocrisy rather than the data. Critics called the angular truck “ugly” or accused him of selling out.
Yet his purchase highlights an inconvenient truth for polarized discourse: when objective safety metrics—IIHS awards, NHTSA ratings, and documented crash performance—point decisively toward one vehicle, even Musk’s biggest critics are forced to confront its merits.
Krassenstein’s decision reveals that superior safety isn’t a partisan issue. For parents prioritizing family protection over personal or political grudges, the Cybertruck has become too safe to ignore.
SpaceXAI announced today that it had signed an agreement with Anthropic to give the company access to its Colossus 1 data center in Memphis, Tennessee.
It is a monumental deal as Anthropic will gain access to all of the compute at the plant, delivering more than 300 megawatts of power and over 220,000 NVIDIA GPUs within the month.
Anthropic’s Claude AI account on X announced the partnership:
“We’ve agreed to a partnership with SpaceX that will substantially increase our compute capacity. This, along with our other recent compute deals, means that we’ve been able to increase our usage limits for Claude Code and the Claude API.”
The company is also:
- Doubling Claude Code’s 5-hour rate limits for Pro, Max, and Team plans;
- Removing the peak hours limit reduction on Claude Code for Pro and Max plans; and
- Substantially raising its API rate limits for Opus models.
We’ve agreed to a partnership with @SpaceX that will substantially increase our compute capacity.
This, along with our other recent compute deals, means that we’ve been able to increase our usage limits for Claude Code and the Claude API.
— Claude (@claudeai) May 6, 2026
SpaceX also published its own release on the new agreement, noting that it is “the only organization with the launch cadence, mass-to-orbit economics, and constellation operations experience to make orbital compute a near-term engineering program rather than a research concept.”
CEO Elon Musk also commented on the partnership and shed light on intense meetings he had with senior members of Anthropic last week, stating, “nobody set on my evil detector.”
Same here.
By way of background for those who care, I spent a lot of time last week with senior members of the Anthropic team to understand what they do to ensure Claude is good for humanity and was impressed.
Everyone I met was highly competent and cared a great deal about…
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 6, 2026
This has turned the argument that SpaceX is as much an AI company as a space exploration company into a very valid argument:
SpaceX is following in Tesla’s footsteps in a way nobody expected
Nevertheless, this is an incredibly valuable and important move in the grand scheme of things. AI scaling is fundamentally bottlenecked by compute, and demand for Claude has surged, bringing terrestrial power grids, land, and cooling operations hitting limits everywhere.
Anthropic has been aggressively signing multiple large-scale deals to be competitive in the space, including:
- Up to 5GW with Amazon
- 5GW with Google and Broadcom
- Strategic $30b Azure deal with Microsoft/NVIDIA
- $50b U.S. infrastructure investment with Fluidstack
Access to Colossus 1 gives Anthropic immediate relief on NVIDIA GPU capacity. For SpaceXAI, it turns its rapid buildout into revenue. It also showcases its ability to deliver at world-leading speed and scale.
Most importantly, it plants the seed that its much larger vision, orbital AI compute, is totally viable.
Starlink V3 satellites could enable SpaceX’s orbital computing plans: Musk
Within the month, Anthropic will begin using 100 percent of Colossus 1’s compute, directly expanding capacity for Claude Pro and Max subscribers and the API. This means fewer limits, faster responses, and support for heavier workloads.
In the long term, meaning 2026 and beyond, there will be a continued rollout of other multi-GW deals Anthropic has signed, and an early exploration of orbital compute with SpaceXAI.
News
Tesla unveils mysterious prototype at Giga Texas: Is the Model Y L coming to America?
The Model Y L has been available in China for some time, but Americans are wondering when it will potentially come to the United States, offering a larger version of the best-selling vehicle in the world, as the Model X is officially phased out.
Tesla unveiled a mysterious prototype, covered up between a Model Y and a Cybertruck at Gigafactory Texas, perhaps giving yet another hint that the Model Y L is coming to America.
The Model Y L has been available in China for some time, but Americans are wondering when it will potentially come to the United States, offering a larger version of the best-selling vehicle in the world, as the Model X is officially phased out.
Giga Texas observer and drone operator Joe Tegtmeyer captured an image of the vehicle on May 6, showing a fully-covered prototype parked alongside a standard Model Y and a Cybertruck.
This mystery Tesla is covered at Gigafactory Texas
What do you think it is? https://t.co/l5WVKLi9yM pic.twitter.com/CcOybDkCkn
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) May 6, 2026
From top-down and angled views, the prototype appears nearly identical in scale to the Model Y but reveals noticeably distinct rear proportions—an elongated rear door that stretches farther over the wheel arch and rear glass that flows uninterrupted to the spoiler lip.
The side-by-side placement provides an immediate size reference. The mystery vehicle sits comfortably between the compact Model Y and the massive Cybertruck, suggesting it occupies a practical middle ground for families seeking more interior room without jumping to a full-size pickup.
Enthusiasts quickly took to social media with guesses ranging from an extended-wheelbase Model Y to a potential station-wagon variant.
The sight of this prototype follows an earlier look at another shrouded body-in-white resting in a wooden shipping crate at the Giga Texas plant in late March.
That prototype appeared to display an elongated silhouette. Some analysis seems to show nearly exact dimensions as to what is reported for the Model Y L in the Chinese market, approximately 4.98 meters long with a 3.04-meter wheelbase, roughly seven inches longer overall than the U.S.-spec Model Y. The rear-door extension and glass-to-spoiler design were identical to the current sighting:
The Model Y L has already proven popular in China, where it launched in six- and seven-seat configurations and quickly ranked among the top-selling mid-to-large SUVs. Owners enjoy roughly 10 percent more cargo space and enhanced family versatility.
Tesla has remained silent on U.S. plans other than CEO Elon Musk saying it could come in late 2026, but localizing production at Giga Texas would make strategic sense.
With the Model X phase-out and steady Model Y output already humming along expanded lines, a longer-wheelbase variant could add tens of thousands of annual deliveries without major retooling.
The latest sighting arrives amid Tesla’s broader push to refresh its lineup. Whether this prototype represents the long-rumored Model Y L, a subtle Juniper-style update, or something entirely new remains unconfirmed.
Yet the consistent visual cues—precise dimensional match, distinctive rear styling, and strategic placement at Giga Texas—point strongly toward an extended Model Y designed for American families who want extra space without sacrificing the Model Y’s efficiency and affordability.Tesla watchers will be monitoring future drone flights closely.
If the prototype is indeed the Model Y L, it could mark a significant expansion of the company’s best-selling vehicle and deliver the extra room many U.S. buyers have been requesting for years. For now, the blue tarp keeps its secrets—but the clues are getting harder to hide.
Tesla Cybertruck too safe for even Musk’s biggest critics to ignore
SpaceXAI signs agreement with Anthropic for massive AI supercomputer access
