Reuters
Elon Musk is back to sleeping on the floor of his factory as Tesla Inc. struggles to meet production goals. He also thinks Silicon Valley needs more oversight.
That’s what the Tesla chief executive told Gayle King of CBS News, in a wide-ranging interview that will air Friday morning. CBS CBS, -2.13% released excerpts of the interview Wednesday.
“I don’t have time to go home and shower . . . I don’t believe like people should be experiencing hardship while the CEO is, like, off on vacation.”
Musk said he was putting in long hours at the Fremont, Calif., factory as Tesla TSLA, -1.24% goes through “production hell” to reach its goal of producing 5,000 Model 3 vehicles a week by the end of June.
As of the beginning of April, Tesla was producing about 2,000 Model 3s per week.
“I definitely feel stress, yeah. It’s like — we’ve been incredibly difficult and painful the last several months,” Musk said. “Yeah, I’m sleeping on the factory floor, not because I think that’s a fun place to sleep, you know. Terrible.”
In the wake of Facebook Inc. FB, +0.78% CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s recent questioning on Capitol Hill, Musk was also asked about the need for more tech regulations, and he said that artificial intelligence — which he has repeatedly warned about — and social media need more rules.
“Whenever there’s something that affects the public good then there does need to be some form of public oversight. … I do think there should be some regulations on AI. I think there should be regulations on social media to the degree that it negatively affects the public good,” he said. “We can’t have like willy-nilly proliferation of fake news, that’s crazy. You can’t have more types of fake news than real news. That’s allowing public deception to go unchecked. That’s crazy.”
Also see: Family of Tesla crash victim hires lawyers
Separately, Reuters reported Wednesday that Tesla is targeting November 2019 for the start of production of its next vehicle, the Model Y crossover SUV.
Tesla shares ended down 1.2% on Wednesday, and have fallen 3.4% year to date, compared with the S&P 500’s SPX, -0.55% 1.2% loss this year. On Tuesday, analysts at Goldman Sachs lowered their price target on the electric-car maker, warning of a possible 36% slide over the next six months from its current level.