Chinese labor? That's the machine that built their most recent machine that builds the machine.

Over-indexing on fancy production automation is part of what made the Model 3 launch so painful for them, as admitted by Elon himself. They probably could have had a much happier path spending less capital on a slower, more traditional production ramp-up.

That’s the scale most don’t realize he’s operating at. With a goal of settling 100,000 on Mars, he has to reach a point of practically commoditizing production of factories.

Maybe he should get better at building cars.