Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, has predicted that China will produce successful makers of electric vehicles because of the nation’s strong work ethic – an attribute that he sees as lacking in the US.
“I think there will be some very strong companies coming out of China,” Musk said on Tuesday in a Financial Times interview. “There’s just a lot of super-talented hardworking people in China that strongly believe in manufacturing.”
Musk, who ranks as the world’s richest person with a fortune estimated by Forbes at more than $225 billion, contrasted Chinese manufacturing workers with their counterparts in the US: “They won’t just be burning the midnight oil, they will be burning the 3 a.m. oil. They won’t even leave the factory type of thing, whereas in America, people are trying to avoid going to work at all.”
Tesla has reportedly employed some labor practices at its Shanghai factory that it clearly couldn’t or wouldn’t try in the US. For example, Bloomberg reported last month that after a three-week lockdown ended, workers at the plant were required to sleep and eat on the factory floor. Each employee was issued a sleeping bag and an air mattress and required to work 12-hour shifts, six days a week.