It had been a few years since I last visited Tesla Motors, that enormous white sheet cake of a factory down at the muddy bottom end of the San Francisco Bay. The Fremont plant used to spit out half a million vehicles a year when it was a GM-Toyota joint venture, when it was a humming hive of American manufacturing vitality. Then it turned into an empty husk, and then Tesla acquired the deed in 2010 for a relative pittance. When I went to see the first Model S in 2012, there were a couple dozen cars in the employee lot. Tumbleweeds would not have looked out of place. Inside, a few robots practiced their tai chi moves with empty pincers, as there were as yet no panels to shuffle. And if you looked beyond the freshly painted and well-lit assembly area, the view faded off into the shadowy darkness of the plant?s deeper reaches. This past October, I exited Interstate 880 in Fremont for the debut of the new Model X crossover. Now, cars fill all the spaces, line the curbs, and spill into overflow lots. Trucks trundle in with deliveries, and minibuses shuttle people around. This dead factory is alive again. READ MORE ??
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