Tesla Pays Employees To Bike To Work After Slew Of Parking Problems
PALO ALTO (KPIX 5) -- Crammed, slammed, riding the curb. No amount of creative parking seems to change the basic calculus for Tesla employees.
Way too many cars are trying to squeeze into too few spots and it adds up to quite a problem.
CBS technology analyst Larry Magid said, "It is ironic. This is a car company that doesn't have enough space for the cars."
Sky Drone 5 was flown above Tesla's Palo Alto headquarters on Wednesday afternoon and showed that every inch of available space was filled.
And it also showed a crazy quilt of cars, in both the traditional parking spots and the lanes in-between.
It's a problem fueled, Magid says, by the company's runaway growth.
Magid said, "From a business standpoint, the worst problem you could have is not having enough money to even hire employees. So obviously, they're well capitalized. They've got an ambitious program this year to build their lower cost model. And they need a lot of people both in the manufacturing and the business side to make that happen."
A Tesla spokesperson acknowledged the problem saying the company is urging employees to use public transportation, is running their own private shuttles and even paying people to ride their bikes to work.
Tesla says parking is less of a problem at its Fremont factory because employees are spread across three different shifts.
Magid says the very technology that's caused the problem may eventually help solve it.
Magid said, "Ultimately, Tesla may solve this problem on their own. If they ever come out with self-driving cars, they can drop people off and go park themselves or pick someone else up."