Neighboring counties have already allowed work like construction to resume. Is a car factory really that different in terms of risk? Just based on the sheer size of the facilities, I can't imagine the density of people is that high, and due to at least some of the work going on, ventilation is probably good.<p>It definitely makes sense to keep businesses like bars and restaurants closed given their nature as a "hub" in the graph of human contacts, but we also need to allow what work we can to continue as long as it doesn't contribute to significant spread of the virus.<p>At the same time, last I saw, car sales had fallen off a cliff. Is there much point to aggressively reopening if those cars can't be sold? But that's a question for Tesla to answer, not Alameda County.
Sigh, it is kind of embarrassing for me that I was a fan of this guy and even own a Tesla. Elon has gone off the rocks quite and bit and now is a straight up loon. He is now full on spreading FUD, which is weird considering the amount of FUD That was spread against Tesla for a while
Two threads on this already:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23126517" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23126517</a><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23127552" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23127552</a><p>Not sure this is likely to go any better.
Is this legal argument actually any good?<p>It seems like the major claim is that Alameda County's order "overrides an express order of the Governor of California," which doesn't make much sense to me. Newsom's order said that <i>individuals</i> working in critical infrastructure sectors are exempt from staying at home. I don't see how Alameda County saying Tesla must stay closed contradicts Newsom saying Tesla employees could go to work, if their workplace was open. Seems sorta weaksauce to interpret an exemption for individuals from a stay at home order as a order than Tesla must remain open.<p>Anyway, seems like a mess, will be interesting to see what happens with this.
I am curious how Tesla employees feel about this, and more generally Musk's continuous and baffling insistence that the coronavirus is no big deal. (Heck, it seems like until and unless this wipes out > 10% of humanity it seems like he'll keep saying 'no big deal')<p>It's one thing if your company and its CEO acknowledge the seriousness of the situation and develop a plausible contingency plan, including masks and random asymptomatic testing. But he seems rather unconcerned about such pedestrian matters and has decided it's a nothingburger and all hype.<p>Has Tesla actually proposed a reasonable plan to do this while Alameda county is seeing a spike in new cases?
Off-topic: I haven't downloaded many legal PDFs lately, but whatever legal software was used to make this one seems to obfuscate the text? The PDF seems like a normal text PDF (as opposed to scanned images), and you can highlight lines of text, but copy-pasting it results in gibberish; find-text-in-document is likewise borked. Using `pdftotext' generates a mostly empty file, though Google Docs conversion manages to extract and preserve the text.<p>I bring this up because the document has several URLs which are non-clickable and non-copy-pastable. I know PDFs can be encoded in away in that the visual layout of the content is completely different to the underlying data, this was just the first time I've seen such obfuscation.<p>edit: here's a normally-behaving copy of the PDF from one of the SF local news stations:<p><a href="https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/15116056/2020/05/Tesla-Incorporated-v.-County-of-Alameda-5-9-20.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/1...</a><p>Assuming the TV station has uploaded the PDF straight from the source (Tesla's lawyers, or the county court system), then maybe the site wholemars.com re-processed its copy of the PDF? In any case, the text/data obfuscation is pretty interesting and I sure hope it doesn't become a standard practice!<p>(I don't blame the OP for posting the wholemars.com link; that was the first I saw of the lawsuit too, at least on Twitter)
Edit: I was a little late in noticing a "show more" link at the bottom of the list that Google gave me for [16 critical infrastructure sectors] and found "Transportation Equipment Manufacturing" is also among the 16. So consider the below moot.<p>In spite of my sympathy for Tesla in general and maybe even their wish to resume operations in particular, their arguments, as I understand it, doesn't seem to be very convincing?<p>It appears to hinge on the categorisation, with Tesla's view being that they belong in the "Energy Sector", which is among the "16 critical infrastructure sectors" exempt from any requirements to shut down.<p>While I guess you can draw a connection of Tesla with the energy sector if you're doing so in a complete vacuum, it is entirely obvious that, when the "energy sector" was exempt from closure, it was based on a definition that under no circumstances would include Tesla. I. e.: power plants and gas stations obviously need to stay open for reasons that just don't apply to manufacturing cars.
For what it's worth, Fremont, the city where Tesla is located, appears more sympathetic to the company<p><a href="http://www.fremont.gov/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=1768" rel="nofollow">http://www.fremont.gov/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=1768</a>
I don't know that this is that notable, is it? Surely there are dozens or hundreds of suits all over the country from businesses quibbling over their non/categorization as essential?<p>It's a pandemic. No one wins here. No policy can be completely fair. Hell, I have opinions about everything and I genuinely don't know that I can find one about this situation. Obviously Tesla (and every employer) wants to open. The county wants people to stay home. Some exceptions get made. Should Tesla be one? Meh.
Tesla compared to their competition is actually doing very well even during the pandemic. So Musk would not be hurt even if its shut down. It’s disappointing that a man of science, who understands data is throwing a fit like this.