Elon Musk declares Tesla engineers will sleep on Texas production line

Elon Musk continues to be the talk of the town in Central Texas. Musk recently warned Austin-area Tesla employees to start preparing for a massively intense workload once production starts on a new EV model being planned.

During an earnings call on Wednesday, January 24, the world’s richest man said he wants engineers at Tesla to live and sleep on the production line of his Austin Gigafactory, Business Insider reports. The company’s CEO added that building Tesla’s next-generation EV in 2025 will require them to make sacrifices.

“We really need the engineers to be living on the line. This is not sort of an off-the-shelf ‘it-just-works’ type of thing,” Musk told investors. “That will be a challenging production ramp … We’ll be sleeping on the line, practically. Not practically, we will be.”

Austin Reddit users are reacting to the news after a user posted the Business Insider article in the Austin sub-Reddit asking, “Austin Area Tesla Employees: How Do You Feel about being asked to sleep at work?”

The comment section was a mixed bag, with many left with more questions than answers to Musk’s words. 

Redditer, joshubu commented, “Sleeping at work overnight? No. Taking naps during the day in a pod or something? F*** yeah!”

Others, like Reddit user zmizzy, said, “Still not cool if it’s used as justification to work longer or more irregular hours.” 

Another Redditer, intensecharacter asked, “Can everyone bring their spouses, kids, and pets?” 

Whereas The_Lutter questioned if Musk’s request was even a good idea, adding, “Half asleep engineers working on vehicles sounds like a recipe for success!”