Suggested Course of Action for Tesla Going Forward

To this point, I believe that Tesla has taken most of the actions the company should have taken. It gets tricky when determining a possible course of action for a company like this. 

    One of the most pressing issues in my opinion is the child labor and unsafe practices surrounding the mining of cobalt in the DRC. Unfortunately, the cobalt is a vital mineral required to produce the batteries needed for the electric vehicles and many other electronic devices. Tesla has no control over the means' cobalt is mined, however the do have the control on if it is necessary to support their practices. Theoretically, if Tesla and many other companies that funded the mining of cobalt stood up to the industry, they could change the conditions in which the workers mine the minerals in. It would need some form of a boycott to enact change, but financially I do not think this response would be a smart decision to make. No cobalt means no batteries means no cars, which in turn means no money.

    As for the Autopilot incidents, I think Tesla should include a virtual demonstration of the specs and safety concerns of the technology. The more aware people are, the fewer accidents there will be caused by user error. If users understand the simple fact that just because the technology can work on its own doesn't mean that you can stop paying attention to the road. Referring to the reported crash numbers, I do not think it necessarily means anything that Tesla has the most crashes of any other assisted driving technology inhabiting vehicles, solely because Tesla has the most number of vehicles with Autopilot on the road. That is like saying a plane that has flown 1000 times and crashed twice crashed more than a plane that flew once and crashed once. It is simply not reasonable or realistic to think in those terms. I would also suggest for the CEO Elon Musk to refrain from Twitter communications to fans, consumers, and stakeholders as they are unprofessional and can be misleading. It is a risky and unnecessary form of communication to have with people especially if you are CEO of a company.

    I think that the company is doing a lot of what they can do to achieve an accurate representation of their mission statement and should continue to do what they have been as it is leading them down a good path. Going forward, research into a less controversial method or way of producing the needed batteries for the cars would be beneficial to the company and would ameliorate a big chunk of the current ethical dilemmas.

Source:

“Electric Cars, Solar & Clean Energy.” Tesla, https://www.tesla.com/.