On the same day Tesla CEO Elon Musk allegedly told his employees that they needed to increase production “as much as possible” for the rest of the year, allegedly. Send an email She informed her employees at her plant in Fremont, California that she was shutting down Model S and Model X production lines for 18 days starting December 24. Talk about mixed signals.

according to CNBC report Tesla posted on Saturday, it offered employees working on these production lines a full week of pay and a few days of paid vacation. However, employees were required to take five days of unplanned, unpaid leave, although an email the port reviewed stated that there would be “limited paid opportunities” for workers to support other parts of the plant.

It must be said: We are living through a pandemic, a A time when millions Their pay was reduced or their working hours reduced. Tesla itself Reduced salaries For wage workers in the first months of the epidemic, from April to June, some workers put every hour on unpaid leave.

Therefore, it would be understandable, although unfortunate, that production would be affected by the pandemic, if that were indeed the case. Tesla, for some reason, did not acknowledge the reality of what we live in in its announcement to employees, according to CNBC. Instead, she said she wanted workers to “seize the opportunity” to rest and spend more time with their families.

“We would like you to take the opportunity to refresh or spend time with your family, so Tesla will give you full wages for the fourth week of January,” the email said, as reported on CNBC. “There will also be limited paid opportunities for you to support other stores or volunteer for delivery during some of that time.”

Say what now? If true, it is the wrong way to interpret stopping production. Gizmodo contacted Tesla on Sunday to confirm the CNBC report. We will make sure to keep this blog up to date if we receive a response. It should be noted that we are not completely sure that we will receive an answer since the company Solve the PR team in October.

As you can see from the email, the stoppage of production was not mentioned everything Tesla: He also said that workers could “volunteer” to deliver vehicles. Now, there’s nothing wrong with offering your workers paid opportunities to deliver vehicles, especially if the factory is facing a demand crisis, but expecting your workers to deliver vehicles without pay is quite another. It is not clear if these opportunities are driven, and that is one of the questions we asked Tesla on Sunday.

What makes this production decision bewildering is that on the same day, Musk sent an email to all employees asking them to increase production for the remainder of the quarter as much as possible.

“We are fortunate that the high-level demand problem is slightly higher than production this quarter,” Musk wrote. “To ensure that we get the best possible result for clients and gain the trust of customers and investors who have placed their hard-earned trust and money with us, we need to increase production for the remainder of the quarter as much as possible. I will only send this note if it really matters. “

CNBC expects the closure of its Model S and Model X production lines indicates the high demand Musk is pointing to not being true for these cars. Recently noticed Almost 50,000 Recalled Model S and Model X cars in China due to potentially defective and unsafe front and rear suspensions in October, plus extended warranty and refunds for repairs provided to older models of both cars that suffered Major computer problems In November.

Ultimately, cars have problems. This is not a secret. We live in tough times. This is not a secret either. Sometimes the demand for certain cars drops. Whatever the reason for the production stoppage, it is best to be upfront about it, or at least not pretend that everything is going well and that workers will spend more time with their families during the holiday season.

Tesla produced 145,036 cars During the third quarter, 16,992 of those were Models S and Model X. 128,044 vehicles were produced from Model 3 and Model Y.

[[[CNBC]