The notoriously willful CEO Elon Musk is picking a fight over his companys Fremont plant. Tesla and its workers will be the worse for it.

Owen Thomas | on May 13, 2020

Photo: Gabrielle Lurie / The Chronicle

Tesla has reopened its Fremont car factory in defiance of county rules prohibiting car manufacturing during shelter-in-place.

Welcome back to Tech Chronicle. The attention economy never closed, but I hope this fine newsletter will reopen your eyes to the tech worlds many challenges.

The four words no one in Silicon Valley wants to hear: You cant do that.

In tech, rules arent meant just to be broken, but disrupted, subverted, refactored and routed around.

Why is Elon Musk insisting on illegally restarting production of electric cars at Teslas Fremont factory, when official permission for a safe resumption of manufacturing seems tantalizingly close?

Having studied Musk for decades, I can only conclude that he doesnt like being told what to do, whether its following rules for officers of publicly traded companies or obeying local health orders.

There is some value to his defiance. When Musk invested in Tesla 16 years ago, electric cars seemed hopelessly uneconomical, unsexy, unwanted. Musk ousted Teslas inconvenient founders, took control and with some help from the federal government got vehicles on the road that woke peoples imagination of what might be possible. He forced automakers in Detroit and Tokyo to take electric cars seriously. That the electric car market seems viable today is a real achievement.

Photo: Frederic J. Brown / AFP / Getty Images 2019

Elon Musks showmanship, like his November unveiling of the battery-powered Cybertruck, has helped sell Tesla vehicles.

But its one thing to break unwritten rules, and another to break written ones. That is what Musk is doing by insisting on reopening Teslas car plant before proving to local health officials satisfaction that it can be done safely. (Those who have worked on automotive assembly lines doubt the work can be done at a social distance and wearing protective equipment.)

Musk has 34 million followers on Twitter, and his provocations play well with his base there. But Teslas future car buyers are another matter. The Bay Area is a big center for electric vehicles. Its also a region where local shelter-in-place orders, despite the short-term economic pain, are popular and for the most part voluntarily adhered to. Musks conspiracy theories about the coronavirus pandemic first he doubted the seriousness of the disease, then dismissed the need for protective measures are unlikely to win him new customers outside his current fan base.

Photo: Jae C. Hong / Associated Press 2019

Musks tweets have often landed him in trouble.

Its also unlikely to make recruiting easier. The pitch for working at Tesla is that youre making the world a better place and saving humanity. How does putting co-workers at risk of infection fit into that vision?

Musk has said that hes going to pick up Tesla and move it out of the Bay Area, factory, headquarters and all. For his electric-car rivals, thats an open invitation to start poaching engineers now. Theres no rule against that.

Owen Thomas, othomas@sfchronicle.com

I attribute everything that has gone wrong to coronavirus. Quibi CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, trying to convince the New York Times that starting a streaming service that doesnt play on TVs is a microbes fault

It would have been Google I/O this week. Oh well. Cisco reports earnings Wednesday, if you want to hear from another videoconferencing vendor thats not Zoom on why theyre not Zoom.

Alex Kantrowitz on Twitters move to make working from home permanent. (Fun fact: Twitter used to have an account for its office called @twoffice that appears to be defunct.) (BuzzFeed News)

Dominic Fracassa on Jack Dorseys donation to the Give2SF fund, which I guess makes up for the money Twitter employees wont be spending locally. (San Francisco Chronicle)

Brian Heater on how the iPhone has become Hollywoods favorite new camera. (TechCrunch)

Tech Chronicle is a weekly newsletter from Owen Thomas, The Chronicles business editor, and the rest of the tech team. Follow along on Twitter: @techchronicle and Instagram: @techchronicle

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Nobody tells Elon Musk what to do. Maybe that's the problem - San Francisco Chronicle