News
Tesla emphasizes factory safety, preempts possible smear campaign by auto union
Tesla released a blog post Sunday evening that reemphasizes the company’s goal to become the safest auto factory in the world. The post comes after the United Auto Workers Union (UAW) attempted to rally support earlier this year from Fremont factory workers in favor of unionizing.
Tesla states that it has received several media inquiries over allegations about safety at its Fremont, California factory. The well-timed nature of the inquiries, and similarity in topic, led Tesla to believe that the UAW was spreading anti-Tesla propaganda to the media in an attempt to provoke a response from the public, and from Tesla employees. In typical fashion, Tesla acted quickly and took to the offensive to defend the company’s approach to manufacturing, and maintaining the health and safety of its employees. The company has gone as far as forming dedicated Ergonomics Teams that have exclusive focus on “improving health and safety and reducing ergonomic risk for current and future production”.
“We are building entirely new vehicles from the ground up, using entirely new technology, production, and manufacturing methods, and ramping them at high volume. Getting this right is extremely difficult, and we deeply appreciate the hard work that all our employees do to help us achieve what most regard as impossible.” says Tesla through its blog post.
Tesla notes that in just 15 years, the company has become the largest manufacturing employer in California with over 10,000 production jobs in the Fremont factory and surrounding Bay Area.
Tesla has a proven track record of putting safety first as made evident by the award-winning safety ratings for its Model S and Model X. Vehicles have taken the brunt of the impact for their occupants, have swerved to avoid accidents and have even accelerated to avoid accidents. The innovative safety features Tesla has built into its vehicles is unsurpassed in the automotive world.
Though Tesla’s safety record to date is already better than industry-average, according to its press release, the company indicates that it continues to learn and apply new production processes aimed at improving employee well-being. Among the improvements are:
- Added 3rd shift to the manufacturing schedule to cut overtime because the employees asked for it and it was the right thing to do.
- Hired dedicated Ergonomist and established an Ergonomics team to ensure that current and future Tesla manufacturing lines are ergonomically friendly for employees.
- Model 3 has been designed with manufacturing employee ergonomics in mind. The Tesla Ergonomics Team works closely with design and engineering teams to catch ergonomics issues before they happen and proactively drive these improvements back into the design of the equipment and the car. Yes, you heard that right. Tesla will redesign the car if it is resulting in ergonomically challenging situations for its manufacturing employees.
- Established safety teams in every department which meets regularly to ensure safety is a top focus in its manufacturing operating departments.
These changes are not just skin deep and the company is seeing the results of the changes already. Tesla says it has collectively reduced 52% in lost time incidents and a 30% reduction in recordable incidents in the first quarter of 2017 versus the same period last year. These more granular metrics support an improvement in the industry standard Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR) which at the end of Q1 2017 was 4.6, a full 32% better than the industry standard of 6.7.
Anyone who has worked in an industry where safety is important can tell you that a culture of safety awareness is built day by day, month by month over many years. Tesla has a demonstrated history of superior results. The steps it has outlined to drive further improvements at the factory are evidence of a continued focus on safety and its employees.
The full post from the Tesla Blog reads as follows:
Creating the Safest Car Factory in the World
Earlier this year, the United Automobile Workers (UAW) announced it was attempting to organize workers in Tesla’s Fremont factory. The latest phase of their campaign involves a concerted and professional media push intended to raise questions about safety at Tesla.
We have received calls from multiple journalists at different publications, all around the same time, with similar allegations from seemingly similar sources about safety in the Tesla factory. Safety is an issue the UAW frequently raises in campaigns it runs against companies, and a topic its organizers have been promoting on social media about Tesla.
Some of the publications who have contacted us have rejected covering this “story” because they understand it is a misleading narrative based on anecdotes, not facts. However, there will likely be a few publications that choose to publish stories regardless, so we want to make sure the public also has the facts. Watch for these articles to downplay or ignore our actual 2017 safety data and to instead focus on a small number of complaints and anecdotes that are not representative of what is actually occurring in our factory of over 10,000 workers.
First, some context is important. The difficulty of starting a successful U.S. car company cannot be overstated, as evidenced by the fact that Ford is the only other U.S. car company to have never gone bankrupt. We are attempting to break this trend in order to fulfill our mission of accelerating the world’s transition to sustainable energy.
We are building entirely new vehicles from the ground up, using entirely new technology, production, and manufacturing methods, and ramping them at high volume. Getting this right is extremely difficult, and we deeply appreciate the hard work that all our employees do to help us achieve what most regard as impossible. While we still have a long way to go, in less than 15 years, we have become California’s largest manufacturing employer, creating more than 10,000 high-quality production jobs in the Bay Area, many of which had previously disappeared with the closure of NUMMI under the stewardship of the UAW.
As we work to achieve our mission, nothing is more important to us than protecting the health and safety of our employees. As we look at our safety record in prior years, we realize that we have not been perfect. No car factory is perfect, but particularly given that Model S and X were the first cars we built at more than tiny volumes, we fully acknowledge that they were not designed for ease of manufacturing – far from it. As would be expected, we have since learned many lessons, including how to improve the production process for the well-being of our colleagues.
Here are just some of the improvements that we have made:
- Historically, depending on production needs, some Tesla employees have worked significant amounts of overtime because it was necessary for the company to survive. However, working overtime can be challenging for employees and their families. Last year, we added a third shift to reduce the overtime burden on each team member and to improve safety. We did this because our employees asked for it, and because it was the right thing to do.
- As a result of this change, the average amount of hours worked by production team members has dropped to about 42 hours per week, and the level of overtime decreased by more than 60%. We hired our first dedicated Ergonomist in 2013, and in 2015 established an Ergonomics Team exclusively focused on improving health and safety and reducing ergonomic risk for current and future production.
- In addition to improving the process of building Model S and X, Model 3 has been designed specifically with ergonomics in mind. Our ergonomics team has worked hand-in-hand with our engineers on the design process. As just one example, we created simulations that showed us where reaching or bending by employees was most likely to occur, which in turn allowed us to redesign the equipment and the car to eliminate these issues as much as possible.
- Each department now has a Safety Team that meets regularly to increase safety awareness and recommend improvements, many of which have already been implemented.
- We are continuing to establish health and safety management procedures to scale with our operational growth.
The third shift, ergonomic improvements and increased safety awareness have collectively led to a 52% reduction in lost time incidents and a 30% reduction in recordable incidents from the first quarter of 2016 to the first quarter of 2017. In addition, through the end of Q1 2017, the factory’s total recordable incident rate (TRIR), the leading metric for workplace safety, is 4.6, which is 32% better than the industry average of 6.7. This data shows that there has been a dramatic improvement in employee safety, we are now significantly better than industry-average, and we continue to improve each day. A few anecdotes in a factory of over 10,000 people can always be given, but these are the facts.
Tesla’s safety record is much better than industry average, but it is not enough. Our goal is to have as close to zero injuries as humanly possible and to become the safest factory in the auto industry. We will get there by continuing to ask our employees to raise safety concerns and to keep proposing ideas that make things even better.
The alternative is to stop improving and to instead do what the rest of the industry, including the UAW, has always done. But being industry average would make our safety 32% worse. We care too much about our team to go backwards.
Elon Musk said today on X that Teslas will start to learn your individual preferences. This is something that he seemed to hint toward earlier this month when he said parking was by far the biggest reason drivers intervene with Full Self-Driving.
Musk made the comment in response to notable Tesla influencer Whole Mars, who said that his vehicle will sometimes disobey the settings he has enabled for his car. He responded to the post, stating that “The car will start to remember your specific interventions and match each person’s individual preferences.”
The car will start to remember your specific interventions and match each person’s individual preferences
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 18, 2026
This is something that could be perhaps one of the biggest ways Tesla could minimize or even work closer toward eliminating interventions altogether. While FSD does a lot of things really well, many people intervene a vast majority of the time not due to major or critical safety errors.
Instead, many take over because the car is doing something that they do not like as a preference; it might park in a parking spot that is not preferred by the driver, it might linger too long in the left lane on the highway (a personal favorite), or it could even take a route that the driver does not like.
These all lead to interventions, but they are not triggered by a major safety issue. Instead, it’s just preference.
READ OUR REVIEW OF TESLA’S LATEST FSD VERSION:
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14.3.5 Early Impressions: new features and early performance
If Teslas could start to learn the personal preferences of the person who owns them, interventions will truly begin to be less frequent. Some of this is already pretty evident, in my opinion. Teslas use a neural network to learn behaviors and accumulate data to improve performance.
For months now, we’ve tracked FSD’s performance at “Except Right Turn” stop signs, something that is very common in Pennsylvania, but many of our readers located in other parts of the U.S. have never heard of. FSD handles one Except Right Turn stop sign very well, one that I travel past frequently. Others that I do not navigate through as often do not have as confident a performance. It seems like the cars might already be doing this to an extent.
🚨 Tesla Full Self-Driving v14.3 proceeds through an Except Right Turn Stop Sign pic.twitter.com/YemRSlens7
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 8, 2026
That example is also for something that is a street sign and not necessarily a driver preference; however, I still feel it is worth mentioning because it only handles that commonly passed Except Right Turn stop sign with true confidence. Others it still seems to struggle with.
This could be one of Tesla’s big moves toward full autonomy, and it could be a pathway to truly unsupervised driving. Every day, millions of cars on the road travel at a human driver’s personal preferences with no incident. Why can’t autonomous vehicles still cater to a passenger’s preferences while being autonomous? Tesla seems to have the idea that it would be possible.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has sharply criticized legacy media outlets for what he describes as selective and biased reporting on vehicle accidents involving Tesla. In a recent X post, DeSantis questioned why headlines routinely spotlight the Tesla brand in crash stories, even when human error is the clear cause, while similar incidents with other automakers often receive generic treatment.
A prime example is the June 19, 2026, fatal crash in Katy, Texas. A Tesla Model 3 driven by Michael Butler struck a brick home at high speed, killing 76-year-old Martha Avila inside. Initial reports and headlines prominently featured “Tesla crash” and referenced the driver’s claim that an automated driving-assistance system was engaged.
Many outlets quickly speculated that Full Self-Driving or Autopilot were the cause of the crash, immediately blaming the suites for the accident shortly after it happened.
However, Tesla responded shortly after the accident with vehicle data that showed Butler manually overrode the system by pressing the accelerator to 100 percent, reaching 73 MPH in a residential area, more than double the speed limit. The accelerator remained floored after impact.
Tesla finally clarifies fatal Texas crash, confirms driver manually overrode acceleration
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) later confirmed these findings, and Butler now faces manslaughter charges. His phone searches also included queries like “Tesla FSD too timid,” suggesting he may have intervened aggressively. Despite this, many headlines continued to center Tesla’s technology rather than the driver’s actions.
DeSantis highlighted a Washington Post headline, which was labeled, “Newly released photo shows wreckage of Tesla crash that killed grandmother.”
Do legacy media outlets typically use headlines involving the make of a car in a crash or is that only for Tesla?
It would be one thing if the self-driving malfunctioned but the crash was purely human-induced.
Seems like these outlets want to associate Tesla with crashes as… pic.twitter.com/EmfyeYiuv6
— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) July 17, 2026
The subheadline noted the driver overrode assistance and floored the accelerator, yet the brand name dominated the framing. He asked whether legacy outlets typically name the make of a car in routine crashes or reserve that treatment for Tesla to push a narrative.
This pattern appears widespread. Crashes involving Ford, Chevrolet, or Toyota vehicles frequently appear as “pickup truck slams into home” or “fatal car crash kills pedestrian” without brand specifics, especially absent new technology angles.
High-profile Ford F-150 or Chevy Silverado incidents tied to large sales volumes often escape brand-callout scrutiny. In contrast, Tesla stories consistently lead with the manufacturer, amplifying perceptions of risk despite data showing strong overall safety performance:
🚨 Why do Tesla Owners get so defensive over the narrative of crashes involving Teslas? https://t.co/aX7ogtjTCR pic.twitter.com/KO4QWaLOKl
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 24, 2026
Tesla’s own 2025 Impact Report indicates vehicles using FSD logged 0.19 major incidents per million miles, roughly eight times fewer than the U.S. average. Models like the Model Y also rank among the safest in IIHS and NHTSA testing for occupant protection. Critics argue disproportionate coverage ignores these statistics and driver behavior factors, such as younger or more aggressive Tesla owners in some studies.
DeSantis frames this as part of a broader political agenda against innovative American companies like Tesla. By consistently naming Tesla while downplaying others, media outlets risk eroding public trust and shaping perceptions detached from the evidence of human error in most cases.
As autonomous technology evolves across the industry, consistent and factual reporting will be essential to separate real safety concerns from narrative-driven coverage.
Tesla entered two new markets this week by advancing its presence in Latvia (Europe) and officially launching operations in Uruguay (South America), marking a rapid dual-continent expansion.
These moves underscore the company’s strategy to tap into emerging EV markets with supportive policies, renewable energy grids, and growing demand for sustainable transport.
Latvia: Strengthening the Baltic Footprint
In Latvia, Tesla has built on its earlier registration of Tesla Latvia SIA in late 2025 with recent steps toward full operations, including job postings for a service center and representation in Riga. This aligns with broader Baltic expansion following Lithuania’s model of pop-up stores and service centers.
Coming to Latvia https://t.co/XNkQQJ2O6a pic.twitter.com/yS9kpcNky1
— Tesla Europe, Middle East & Africa (@teslaeurope) July 17, 2026
EV penetration in Latvia stands at around 7 percent for BEVs in new passenger car registrations. 2025 data showed 1,602 BEVs out of about 22,500 total, or 7.1 percent, with combined plug-ins nearing 19 percent. Growth has been steady but below the European average, supported by government subsidies and infrastructure development. Tesla models like the Model 3 lead local EV registrations.
Vehicles for the Latvian market will likely be sourced from Gigafactory Berlin or Gigafactory Shanghai. Charging infrastructure is robust for the region as well, with over 400- 2,000 public points, with Tesla Superchargers in Riga, Jūrmala, and along Via Baltica routes offering up to 250 kW.
Uruguay: Third South American Country
Tesla teased its Uruguay arrival with “Estamos llegando,” or, “We are arriving,” on social media, followed by an official presentation scheduled for mid-July.
Hola Uruguay 🇺🇾
Nuestros Model 3 y Model Y están cada vez mas cerca! pic.twitter.com/FR41fsA7um
— Tesla Latinoamérica (@Tesla_LatAm) June 30, 2026
The company established Tesla Uruguay SAS, homologated Model 3 and Model Y (three versions each), and appointed local leadership. This makes Uruguay Tesla’s third official South American market after Chile and Colombia.
Uruguay boasts one of Latin America’s highest EV penetrations, with battery-electric vehicles exceeding 20 percent market share recently, driven by tax incentives, high fuel prices, and a nearly 95-100 percent renewable electricity grid. Hundreds of Teslas already operate via grey imports, but official sales bring warranties, service, and support.
Vehicles will be imported from Gigafactory Shanghai, enabling competitive pricing for Model 3 and Model Y. Charging plans include Supercharger development alongside existing infrastructure, leveraging the country’s green energy advantage for affordable operation.
Tesla Superchargers follow Model 3 and Model Y to South American country
Tesla’s Dual Continent Expansion
Tesla’s simultaneous push into Latvia and Uruguay demonstrates efficient scaling: prioritizing service and infrastructure first, then direct sales in high-potential niches. In Europe, it fills Baltic gaps; in Latin America, it counters Chinese dominance while leveraging renewables.
This dual move signals Tesla’s ambition to accelerate global EV adoption amid varying regional paces. By addressing local needs, like subsidies in Latvia or incentives and green grids in Uruguay, Tesla not only boosts volumes but advances its mission of sustainable energy.
For investors and consumers, it highlights resilience and opportunity in diverse markets, potentially paving the way for further growth in underserved regions. With strong fundamentals in both, these entries could yield long-term gains as EV transitions mature worldwide.
Elon Musk says your Tesla will start to learn your individual preferences
Ron DeSantis calls out media bias in Tesla crash coverage
