Elon Musk’s late-night announcement to raise prices and reopen some stores

Enlarge (credit: Robyn Beck/Pool via Bloomberg|Getty Images)

In the early hours of Monday morning, Tesla employees got a surprising email from CEO Elon Musk. Less than two weeks after announcing that he was closing the company’s retail stores and letting go the sales staff, it was time for an about-turn. According to CNBC, which received a copy of the email, Musk wrote that the company would now be keeping many of its unclosed stores open and would even reopen some of the now-shuttered locations. Additionally, a week from now, there will be price increases on all of its vehicles with the exception of the standard range Model 3. The email to employees was also followed by a public-facing blog post.

Musk referred to some of the closed stores as being “in such difficult or obscure locations, only Sherlock Holmes could find them.” Such a criticism could not be leveled at Tesla’s now-closed store in Washington, DC, located in the city’s newest and poshest downtown retail location; perhaps this store was one that suffered from “low apparent demand generation.”

Despite this possible reprieve for the thousands of retail workers at Tesla, Musk’s email and the blog post state that sales will remain online only and that the stores will exist just to show people how to order a car “on their phone in a few minutes.”