Coronavirus: Tesla halts Shanghai production again as logistics issues persist, cases outside quarantine zones nearly triple
- A source said at least part of the carmaker’s giant Giga Shanghai plant halted work on Monday, and the company confirmed logistics problems
- Total new infections in Shanghai dropped for the 17th day in a row, but new cases in non-quarantined zones nearly tripled from a day earlier
A supply-chain breakdown caused production hiccups at Tesla’s Shanghai assembly plant just three weeks after the facility resumed operations, as logistics issues caused by the city’s Covid-19 lockdown continue to reverberate through the manufacturing sector.
The Shanghai-based financial newspaper China Business News reported that Irish electric systems supplier Aptiv had stopped assembly at a plant in northern Shanghai’s Jiading district since May 8 after positive cases were discovered among its workers. The suspension at the plant, which provides components to major carmakers in Shanghai, could have exacerbated the supply-chain bottleneck Tesla is facing, it added.
A source with knowledge of the matter said at least part of Giga Shanghai stopped operating on Monday. Tesla’s April sales plunged by nearly 84 pet cent from a month earlier to 10,757 vehicles.
“Supply-chain constraints and broken logistics links amid a shutdown of the city cannot be fully resolved until the lockdown is lifted,” said David Zhang, a researcher at the North China University of Technology. “Indeed, the automotive industry across the country is affected by the antivirus measures in Shanghai.”
Tesla resumed operations at Giga Shanghai on April 19 after a 22-day hiatus, employing a closed-loop system, where workers sleep on site to avoid contact with outsiders.
The company could only run a single shift initially owing to a shortage of components, which limited output to about 1,000 vehicles a day – only half the plant’s normal daily output of more than 2,000 cars.
As a 39-day citywide lockdown grinds on, Shanghai has yet to achieve the so-called societal zero-Covid goal of no new cases outside quarantined zones, despite enforcing stringent virus-control measures.
Shanghai officials detected 3,014 new cases in the past 24 hours, 23.6 per cent fewer than a day earlier, according to data released on Tuesday. Symptomatic cases fell 27.3 per cent to 234 while six patients died, compared to 11 a day earlier.
Total infections dropped for the 17th consecutive day, but the city failed again to live up to its expectations of keeping the virus at bay in the precautionary zones – the low-risk, unguarded zones that had not seen any infections in the past 14 days. Those areas saw 25 new cases in the last 24 hours, nearly triple the nine new cases reported a day earlier.
The mainland’s commercial and financial capital went into a citywide lockdown on April 1, but has yet to unveil a time frame for easing it. The city has seen 611,000 cumulative cases during the outbreak, according to the data released on Tuesday morning. When the city manages to confine new cases to quarantined areas, Shanghai’s 25 million residents will see drastically eased lockdown measures that are expected to give the economy a boost.
