Tesla’s lone U.S. assembly plant posed a risk to public health amid coronavirus outbreak by staying open in spite of Bay Area shelter-in-place orders.
, Kimberly Petersen, Fremont’s police chief, and other city officials held a virtual meeting March 19 to follow up on a determination reached the day before: The company had to cease all activities except for minimum basic operations.
In a March 21 letter to Tesla, she recounted the city’s efforts to seek clarification as to whether the carmaker was an essential business by consulting with Scott Dickey, the assistant counsel for the county.Tesla’s plant employs roughly 10,000 people, but many workers commute from elsewhere, including California’s Central Valley. Videoon March 17 showed workers standing shoulder-to-shoulder to pack onto buses in the Tesla parking lot.
When Tesla representatives including Rohan Patel, a senior director of policy and business development who used to work in the Obama administration, met with Fremont officials March 19, they said the company intended to comply with the order, though it needed to conduct a “staged shutdown” of the plant.
The two sides agreed that all vehicle manufacturing would cease March 23. Employees who remained on site would complete work at the end of assembly lines to protect the value of vehicles and batteries, while others would perform basic operations such as security, maintenance and cleaning, all while following social-distancing requirements.
“You explicitly agreed to that understanding,” the police chief later wrote. “If you were to transition to manufacturing ventilators, or other equipment intended to aid in the fight against Covid-19, these activities would be permitted.”
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