While much has been said about Tesla’s production hell, not many are aware of the delivery hell we faced after overcoming the first challenge.

This takes place about three months down the road from my previous story; we had stabilized production and were no longer in danger of bankruptcy. But now we were faced with a new problem – our delivery infrastructure simply could not keep up with our success. Our factory parking lots were filling up so fast that we would have to stop production if we didn’t deliver these cars to the customers fast enough. So once more, we got an email from Elon. We were asked to drop everything and report to the factory to deliver the cars that we built.

I showed up at the factory and reported to Mukund Chavan, one of the leaders at Tesla. He said my first job was to lead a team of engineers to move hundreds of cars from the factory parking lot off to multiple remote parking lots 3-4 miles away. He was driving a small minibus to carry all the engineers back & forth. He handed me the keys and asked me to take over.

If you know me, I am not what you would call the best of drivers. I have a horrible sense of direction, and I can get shaky when I start driving a new car in a new place. I had never driven a bus before. Being asked to drive a busload of engineers, in a new area, was causing panic alarms all over my brain. So I told Mukund I couldn’t do it. And I asked to be assigned something else. He looked at me kindly and said, “Look, I will never ask you to do anything unsafe or force you to do anything you’re not comfortable with. I can give you a different job. But didn’t you come to Tesla precisely because you wanted to get out of your comfort zone?”

So I thought about it for a moment, and I said I will give it a shot. We moved hundreds of cars over the next few days, and the production didn’t stop.

My last story covers customer delivery. We didn’t have the delivery infrastructure set up and our delivery centers were all backed up. So we came up with the idea of direct home delivery to the customers. After the usual training, I had the opportunity to deliver my first customer car. Turns out he was a very dissatisfied and angry customer. He had been waiting for his car for several hours that day, and his day had been ruined by the late delivery. It was difficult, showing up to a very upset customer who made it clear you were at fault for his problems. So on the way back, I was thinking, “Maybe this direct delivery is not my cup of tea. I am better off working at the back end, ferrying cars and taking customer orders.”

I told myself to do at least a few more before I quit on this. And the next delivery I did turned out to be my best experience at Tesla, ever. It was an address in Fremont. As I rolled into the driveway, I saw an entire family so excited to get their first Tesla M3 — the dad filming me as I entered, the two kids jumping up & down with joy, and the mom quiet but beaming with joy. They asked me to join their group picture, and then asked me a whole bunch of questions about me & my background. They were astonished to learn that I was not just a delivery guy, but one of the many engineers who dropped their regular work to support deliveries during this time. I wasn’t expecting to encounter so much warmth – there was curiosity, excitement, and there was gratitude.

And that was the moment I realized why I had joined Tesla.