CB Insights, a data analytics firm, has done something interesting: it used algorithmic analysis to crunch 28 quarter of earnings-call transcripts from General Motors, Ford, Daimler, and Tesla.

The firm was able to make some intriguing observations from scrutinizing calls from 2011-2017, but one result stands out: Tesla spends way more time taking about robots than other automakers.

"Tesla is the only [company] talking about using robots in the assembly line, with mentions of 'robots' and 'robotics' reaching a new peak in 2017," CB Insights wrote in its Mobility Earnings Transcript Analysis report.

Automation has been a double-edged sword for Tesla. CEO Elon Musk has talked it up a major future differentiator, enabling Tesla to build vehicles better and faster. But in practice at the carmaker's factories in Fremont and Nevada, it's been a mixed bag. Some efforts at automation haven't worked, and human workers have been added to the process to fix problems.

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Musk's "machine that builds the machine" is farther off than it might have seemed a year ago.

But why aren't other automaker's talking about robots?

The answer has two parts. First, Musk's embrace of automation is consistent with Tesla's story of disruption: in a brave new world of high-tech, Silicon Valley-inspired mobility, of course the dirty work will be done by machines.

Second, established automakers have their act together with robots and have been dealing with them for decades. They might not be trying to replace all human workers with robots — in fact, efforts to do so have been unsuccessful, and car companies have learned their lessons —but they're familiar with what automation can achieve. So they treat it as a given. If they had to talk about it, particularly on an earnings call, it might actually be a bad thing.

The bottom line is that GM and Ford use a lot of robots to build millions of vehicles globally and have for years. But because automation, as it is currently utilized, is completely baked into their business models, it's pointless to discuss it with Wall Street analysts. They're more concerned about financial results.

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Tesla financial results have been extremely depressing: the company has never posted an annual profit in 15 years of existence and in 2017 lost more money than ever. The balance sheet is something of a disaster. The stock price, however, is riding high, largely on the strength of a story.

Robots have been, of late, a key part of the Tesla tale. So we shouldn't be surprised that Musk has been spending more time than anybody else telling investors about them.

There appears to be a major glitch in Facebook's new policy for screening political ads, and it's putting some local businesses' noses out of joint.

On Thursday, The New York Times reported that Facebook has been mistakenly rejecting ads from local businesses, claiming that they contain political content when they do not.

The social-media platform recently made a rule that anyone running political ads on Facebook must be authorized to do so by confirming their identity and location. The goal is to prevent abuse of political ads like those that were linked to Russia during the 2016 presidential election.

"Advertisers will be prohibited from running political ads — electoral or issue-based — until they are authorized," the company said in April.

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According to The Times, Facebook reviews the ads using a combination of artificial intelligence and human reviewers to determine whether they are meeting the criteria or not, which leaves room for error.

Rob Leathern, Facebook's director of product management, told the Times that the review process wasn't always working as planned.

"These are new policies, and it's not going to be perfect at the start," he said, adding: "We think it's better than doing nothing at all."

The Times listed a series of different businesses that have seen their ads rejected on political grounds, including a hair salon, a vegetarian restaurant, and children's daycare center.

Michelle Benson, who runs a children's daycare center in Shirley, New York, told the Times that she tried to spend $100 on an ad informing parents that she had openings for more children this summer.

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"I will beat anyone's rates and accommodate parents according to their schedule," the advertisement said.

Despite the ad not having any reference to politics, Benson received a notification from Facebook that it had been rejected because she was not "authorized to run ads with political content."

Other people have taken to social media to vent their frustrations:

With Brian Krzanich's sudden and surprise departure from Intel's corner office, it's time to play the who-will-take-his place game.

Intel has a long tradition of grooming its CEOs from within its internal ranks.

That makes a lot of sense given how huge the company is across so many different electronics markets, from PC processors to memory to networking and so on.

Most importantly, the CEO of Intel needs to balance two very distinct jobs:

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1. Keeping a global network of multi-billion dollar chip manufacturing facilities running smoothly and without any hiccups.

2. Having the vision to focus on the right products and to steer the company into new markets (without missing the next big thing, as Intel famously did in mobile).

Brian Krzanich David Becker/Stringer Finding someone who can do both of those jobs is no easy feat, which is why the company has always ended up going with someone internal.

But times are changing. The company is still recovering from missing the boat on the mobile platform shift. And some chip industry insiders are buzzing that now may finally be the time for Intel to break with tradition.

Intel itself said, quite deliberately, that it will be looking at CEO candidates externally, as well as internally — and for good reason. Most of the top internal candidates are relatively new hires. So if you're going to go with someone who hasn't been there very long, it opens to door to going with fresh blood altogether.

The most likely candidates internally are:

Bob Swan, who is currently interim CEO. He joined Intel in 2016 as CFO, and he may looking at this as an extended job interview. He may succeed and nab the top role permanently for himself.

The main downside to Swan is that he's a straight up financial guy, not an engineer. He was the CFO of eBay for nine years, and also worked at investing firm General Atlantic. To succeed, he'd have to build a brain-trust of execs that could run the technical side of the business, and fix Intel's 10nm (and beyond) chip fabrication issues.

Venkata "Murthy" Renduchintala Intel Navin Shenoy joined Intel in 1995 and currently runs Intel's all important data center group. He's the classic choice as he grew up inside Intel and cut his teeth as the technical assistant to former Intel CEO Paul Otellini. He's known internally for having the product vision that Intel needs right now.

Venkata Renduchintala, known at Intel as Murthy. Renduchintala was hired away from Qualcomm in 2016 and currently runs Intel's hefty client device products and its hot up-and-coming Internet of Things (IoT) products.

He's got the technical chops, though his management style has raised eyebrows in the past. In a 2016 Business Insider profile one person described Renduchintala as being "loud" and "not afraid to say" his opinion, while another called his leadership style "command and control" where he often "dressed down" underperforming executives at Qualcomm.

Jim Keller Intel Raja Koduri was hired away from AMD in 2017. He runs a new group that was formed when he was hired —Intel's Core and Visual Computing Group, which deals with graphics and other visual technologies.

Jim Keller is the newest hire, joining in April from his short-lived stint running Tesla's self-driving autopilot group (a job at Tesla that has seen a lot of turnover). Prior to that, Keller spent most of his career in semiconductors for AMD and others. He's a long-shot but if Intel wanted to bring in fresh blood for its CEO while still maintaining its tradition of hiring from within, Keller could be the guy. He currently leads chip engineering.

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If Intel is serious about looking outside the company, one place it might want to prowl is the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the giant chip manufacturer that makes processors for everyone from Apple to Qualcomm.

Rick Cassidy is CEO of TMSC's North America unit. TSMC's semiconductor manufacturing process is kicking Intel's butt. As Intel has struggled to get its 10nm chips into production while dreaming of its 7nm offerings, TSMC not only already has 10nm chips available, earlier this year it started mass producing 7nm, and is working on 5nm, the chip that is supposed to be the "end of Moore's Law." Hiring someone from TSMC might be the boost Intel needs.

AMD CEO Lisa Su AMD Sanjay Jha is the recently departed CEO of Intel's fab rival Global Foundries, who left that role March after four years as CEO. He's also the former COO of Qualcomm. It's not clear why Jha left, whether he was falling short of expectations or if he quit on his own. Global Foundries has a reputation of being a hard place for CEOs, and has gone through four CEOs now in less than a decade, EE Times' Rick Merritt reports.

The dream CEO for Intel employees is AMD's Lisa Su. It seems far fetched that she would jump ship though. Su has been crushing it at AMD and she'd be leaving for AMD's all-time arch rival.

People are also talking about Renee James, the one time heir apparent to Krzanich. But she is unlikely to go back to Intel. James spent 28 years at Intel and left in 2015 and earlier this year came out of stealth as CEO of her own chip company, Ampere. She's deliriously happy doing her own startup, she previously told Business Insider.

Marc Pritchard, the chief brand officer for Procter & Gamble, has spent the past few years on a crusade to clean up digital advertising.

Now he may be taking on an even more quixotic mission: getting the so-called walled gardens to lower their walls just a bit.

In a sit-down with Business Insider at the Cannes ad festival, Pritchard said he was feeling better about P&G's digital advertising output, citing strides the industry had made in sniffing out fraudulent ads and making sure brands pay only for ads people can see.

Phase two of his digital cleanup, he says, is to get Facebook and Google to share more of their data. And he thinks he can get the famously data-hoarding duopoly to bend just a bit.

Facebook and Google have massive data assets that power their businesses

Both Facebook and Google have reams of data on customers (where they live, what they search for, and the like) that is used for ad targeting. And advertisers have long grumbled that these two tech giants won't let that data leave their premises.

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And Pritchard doesn't expect them to just hand that date over — such powerful data sets are a massive business advantage. More specifically, he wants the duopoly companies to help P&G match up the audiences it is targeting elsewhere on the web with its targeting efforts on Facebook and Google.

That way, theoretically, P&G can see how many times it's reaching a person across the digital landscape and make sure it isn't pounding the same people over the head with the same ads again and again.

This kind of insight could also help its brands spend their ad budgets more effectively, since they should have better information on what's working and what isn't.

Lots of brands have complained about this dynamic. Pritchard says he's talking to Facebook and Google and thinks he'll get a solution.

"The next level of transparency is going to come from how to avoid that cross-platform frequency," he said. Based on P&G's research on this subject, in some cases the company's brands were under the impression they were reaching people three times with an ad and it was closer to 10 or even 20 times.

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Not only is that a waste of money, but it annoys people, Pritchard said. "It's a consumer pain point," he said.

OK. But haven't the big platforms been resistant to any data sharing? Pritchard says no. "They're willing to do it," he said. "They're trying ... it is a bigger challenge because they need protect privacy data. But what we have said is, 'We just want you to help us solve the objective rather than telling you how to do it.'"

"We will see," he said. "We're still in the early stages of this frontier."

Facebook and Google are listening, but P&G only has so much leverage

P&G is the world's biggest advertiser. And because of that, it's had a history of using its clout to get what it wants from media partners, whether that is good pricing or unique deals.

But Facebook has roughly 6 million advertisers, and Google is in the same neighborhood. So what leverage does P&G have?

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"At least in the transparency world, when we called this out, the big platforms responded," Pritchard said. "They knew it was the right thing to do."

"But because they have 6 million," he added, "we can't rely on just them — there's many fish in the ocean and many ways we can reach people."

Clinkle is a cautionary tale in Silicon Valley — a failed startup that raised tens of millions of dollars before crashing and burning spectacularly and publicly.

Now, its founder is reportedly planning a return to tech. According to a report from Wired's Erin Griffith, Lucas Duplan is involved in a new cryptocurrency company.

The former CEO is apparently now building a venture capital investment fund, and has invested in a blockchain startup. It's called Universal Recognition Token, and describes itself as a "blockchain-based corporate rewards marketplace where employees may auction their gifts, rewards and prizes to the general public."

Duplan isn't listed on the company's website as part of the team, but according to anonymous sources who spoke to Wired, he has previously called himself the founder, CEO (a role now apparently filled by another exec), or CIO. However, he told Wired that while he's "involved" with the company, he didn't create it and "is not employed by the company and is not involved in day-to-day operations."

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Duplan did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment. His LinkedIn profile makes no reference to the reported venture capital fund or Universal Recognition Token. Instead, he's just listed as the founder of corporate perks system Treats, which is said to be a rebranded version of Clinkle.

During the heydey of Clinkle, it raised $30 million before ever launching a product. The idea was that it was a cutting-edge peer-to-peer payments system that would be easier to use than Venmo or apps like it. When it finally debuted in 2014, though, flashy marketing stunts like a vending machine full of money didn't sufficiently set it apart, and it almost went completely bust in 2015 before pivoting to its current form.

All the while, as Business Insider reported in 2014, the company was plagued by dysfunction, with employees and executives leaving en masse ahead of the product launch. It has since become synonymous with the worst excesses of tech industry hype and hubris — as exemplified by a notorious photo of Duplan holding up wads of cash.

After years of complaints from unhappy customers, Apple is finally taking action on the notorious keyboard in the MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops.

In a statement provided to Apple blog 9to5Mac, an Apple spokesperson said: "Today we launched a keyboard service program for our customers that covers a small percentage of keyboards in certain MacBook and MacBook Pro models which may exhibit one or more of the following behaviors: letters or characters that repeat unexpectedly or don't appear when pressed or keys that feel "sticky" or aren't responding in a consistent manner."

When the company redesigned the MacBook in 2015, it introduced a new "butterfly" keyboard design. It was slimmer than previous models — but also plagued by technical issues. Customers have complained endlessly that it breaks easily, and that keys can be jammed by a single spec of dust.

Apple's response thus far had largely been to provide cleaning instructions to blow out dust, a solution that many customers found unsatisfactory.

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But on Friday, the California company announced it is taking more substantial steps to solve tackle the problem: It is providing repairs to affected customers free-of-charge, and giving refunds to those who had to pay to get their laptops repaired because of the issue.

The devices covered range from the first redesigned 2015 MacBook through to the most recent 2017 model, and MacBook Pro models from 2016 onwards, when it also adopted the butterfly keyboard. There's a complete list of eligible devices on Apple's website.

The keyboard has been a constant frustration for Apple fans. A petition circulated earlier this year calling for a formal recall, and it even sparked class-action lawsuits.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment. For more information about the "Keyboard Service Program," check out Apple's website.

The good news is that, as promised, Pokémon Go rolled out a new set of social features on Thursday that finally bring the ability to trade Pokémon with your friends, among other perks.

By Friday afternoon, Niantic had finished the rollout: All players can add friends, and anyone over level 10 can trade Pokémon.

The way the rollout was handled frustratef some users, however. When the feature launched launch, the feature was available only for players at the game's maximum level of 40. For context, I've been playing every single day since the game came out in July 2016, and I'm level 32.

On its customer support page, Pokémon Go's developer, Niantic, said that this is a temporary situation and that it will be slowly easing people into the feature, though it didn't give a timetable. Indeed, Niantic gradually eased its level restrictions, until finally rolling out to everybody.

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Niantic has a history of this kind of thing. New features, like 20-player raid battles, have rolled out first to those at high levels before coming to the wider base. The ultimate goal is likely to avoid the kind of server instability that characterized the game in its first days.

Still, players were frustrated. The ability to trade Pokémon was first promised in the days after the game's release, so the hype was strong when Niantic announced this week that it would finally arrive. To have the feature in their apps, but not know when they'd be able to actually use it, rubbed some the wrong way.

The good news is that this frustration seems to have been short-lived.

One final note: Niantic has also said that adding friends isn't available to anyone under the age of 13, meaning children can't trade their Pokémon, so be advised.

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In the meantime, check out our guide on how trading in Pokémon Go works, once you have access.

On Thursday, a group of Amazon employees sent a signed letter to CEO Jeff Bezos calling on the company to stop selling a sophisticated facial recognition software to law enforcement agencies.

Business Insider has learned that more than 100 Amazon workers signed the letter, including some senior engineers.

Those who signed the letter want the company to cease "providing infrastructure to Palantir (the company that builds preditive policing tools) and any other Amazon partners who enable (Immigration and Customs Enforcement)," according to documents reviewed by Business Insider. They also ask that Amazon "implement strong transparency and accountability measures" that identify which law enforcement agencies are already using the company's technology.

Last May, the American Civil Liberties Union reported that Amazon had "officially entered the surveillance business." The ACLU said that it had seen Amazon's marketing materials for Rekognition and that it had focused on selling the software to governments and police. The ACLU also wrote that Rekognition, powered by artificial intelligence, could in real time "identify, track and analyze" the faces of up to 100 people from a single image.

This is the latest protest in a growing number of employee revolts at some of the tech sector's biggest companies. Many tech workers don't want to help create software or other tech that might be used to wage war or conduct surveillance on the public. The Hill first reported about the existence of the letter.

At Google, employees not only circulated a petition that demanded Google stop supplying artificial intelligence tools that assisted the US Department of Defense to analyze drone-video footage, but someone within the company also leaked some embarrassing emails that showed the extent of management's ambitions on working with the military.

Eventually, Google relented, and earlier this month the company promised not to make AI weapons or use the technology for anything that could cause harm.

Microsoft employees followed suit by calling on management to end its cloud computing contract with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Read the full letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos below:

Dear Jeff,

We are troubled by the recent report from the ACLU exposing our company's practice of selling AWS Rekognition, a powerful facial recognition technology, to police departments and government agencies. We don't have to wait to find out how these technologies will be used. We already know that in the midst of historic militarization of police, renewed targeting of Black activists, and the growth of a federal deportation force currently engaged in human rights abuses — this will be another powerful tool for the surveillance state, and ultimately serve to harm the most marginalized. We are not alone in this view: over 40 civil rights organizations signed an open letter in opposition to the governmental use of facial recognition, while over 150,000 individuals signed another petition delivered by the ACLU. We also know that Palantir runs on AWS. And we know that ICE relies on Palantir to power its detention and deportation programs. Along with much of the world we watched in horror recently as U.S. authorities tore children away from their parents. Since April 19, 2018 the Department of Homeland Security has sent nearly 2,000 children to mass detention centers. This treatment goes against U.N. Refugee Agency guidelines that say children have the right to remain united with their parents, and that asylum-seekers have a legal right to claim asylum. In the face of this immoral U.S. policy, and the U.S.'s increasingly inhumane treatment of refugees and immigrants beyond this specific policy, we are deeply concerned that Amazon is implicated, providing infrastructure and services that enable ICE and DHS. Technology like ours is playing an increasingly critical role across many sectors of society. What is clear to us is that our development and sales practices have yet to acknowledge the obligation that comes with this. Focusing solely on shareholder value is a race to the bottom, and one that we will not participate in. We refuse to build the platform that powers ICE, and we refuse to contribute to tools that violate human rights. As ethically concerned Amazonians, we demand a choice in what we build, and a say in how it is used. We learn from history, and we understand how IBM's systems were employed in the 1940s to help Hitler. IBM did not take responsibility then, and by the time their role was understood, it was too late. We will not let that happen again. The time to act is now. We call on you to: 1 . Stop selling facial recognition services to law enforcement 2. Stop providing infrastructure to Palantir and any other Amazon partners who enable ICE. 3. Implement strong transparency and accountability measures, that include enumerating which law enforcement agencies and companies supporting law enforcement agencies are using Amazon services, and how. Our company should not be in the surveillance business; we should not be in the policing business; we should not be in the business of supporting those who monitor and oppress marginalized populations. Sincerely, Amazonians

The Trump administration has vowed to reunite the more than 2,300 migrant children and parents who've been forcibly separated as the result of the "zero-tolerance" policy enacted by the US Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice.

But the logistical challenges of bringing families back together are only beginning to emerge. Because the cases of parents and children have been handled by separate agencies — and some parents have already been deported — reuniting kids with their parents is a dauntingly difficult and complex task.

Members of Congress are searching for potential solutions. On Thursday, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) talked to 23andMe about the possibility of using genetic testing to help reunite families, BuzzFeed News reported.

The next day, 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki tweeted that the company had offered to donate some of its spit-in-a-tube DNA-testing kits, along with "resources to do the genetic testing," to help families reconnect.

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A 23andMe representative confirmed to Business Insider that the company is working on a plan for this, although "program details haven't been finalized."

Once genetic data has been submitted to a database like those kept by 23andMe, Ancestry, or one of the other myriad companies providing these services, it is difficult and in some cases virtually impossible to delete. Some experts fear the data can be hacked, used in a discriminatory manner by insurance companies or employers, or used to locate other family members without their consent.

That is one of privacy experts' main concerns about genetic data in general: that people beyond the individuals who choose to do a genetic test could be affected by its results. In the case of the Golden State Killer, for example, the suspect was tracked down using samples that a relative submitted to public genealogy database GEDmatch.

"You might be informed about the risks of doing a test like this, but other people might not," May said.

Importantly, 23andMe is a private database, not a public one like GEDmatch. But private data was hacked last month at DNA testing and genealogy site MyHeritage, compromising the data of 92 million users.

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May said that although he believes 23andMe's offer to help unite families is well-intentioned, he hopes some ground rules will be established before the company gets involved.

"I think it would behoove [them] to supplement their good intentions by taking steps to make sure this travesty is not being used as a surreptitious way for authorities to enter individuals' genetic information into a law-enforcement database," May said. "I hope, therefore, that it is 23andMe's intention to destroy this information after its use for this discrete purpose of reunification, and refuse to enter this into a database."

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi gave its CEO and founder one of the largest executive bonuses in history, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

According to a securities filing reviewed by the Journal, CEO Lei Jun received $1.5 million in stock to "reward him for his contributions." Citing a source familiar with the matter, the Journal reported that the massive payout doesn't have any strings attached, and isn't tied to any future performance goals, nor to how well the company's stock does when it launches its planned initial public offering in early July.

After the IPO, Jun's stock could be worth up to $1.79 billion in US dollars, assuming the company lists it shares at its planned range.

The $1.5 billion bonus surpasses some of the largest stock awards from tech companies in recent memory, including Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel's $638 million bonus in February, which at the time was the biggest stock award since at least 2011.

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A reward this big that isn't tied to meeting any kind of future business goals is unusual, in and of itself. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, for example, stands to gain $2.6 billion in stock awards over the next decade— but only if the company meets certain milestones.

Xiaomi has not responded to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Read the full Wall Street Journal story here>>

"Younger children are simply not ready to have social media accounts. They are not old enough to navigate the complexities of online relationships, which often lead to misunderstandings and conflicts even among more mature users. They also do not have a fully developed understanding of privacy, including what's appropriate to share with others and who has access to their conversations, pictures, and videos."

Others are more positive about the app, arguing it provides a safe space for children to learn how social media works. TechCrunch's Sarah Perez wrote: "The alternative to using Messenger Kids is what a lot parents do - they refuse all social apps until kids reach a certain age, then throw them to the wolves on the internet. Is that really better?"

In Friday's announcement, Facebook said: "We designed Messenger Kids from the ground up with elements that teach kids how to better understand and express their emotions in creative ways, encourage and promote healthy social behaviors, and deepen positive connections between kids and their close friends and families."

It has announced a number of new features for the app. There's now a "Pledge" that it asks parents to read and agree to with their children, including "be respectful" and "be safe." It's also adding "Kindness stickers" that are "designed to inspire kindness towards others," and Appreciation Mission, "an interactive guide within the app that will encourage kids to discover and express appreciation for their friends and family."

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"We are committed to building better products for families, including Messenger Kids. That means listening to parents, experts, and our critics. It's why we engaged in conversations with many groups in the year leading up to the launch and we have continued doing so this year as we prepared to bring the app to families in Canada and Peru," a Facebook spokesperson tells Business Insider.

Prepare yourselves: Nintendo is about to rerelease the NES Classic Edition console, its wildly popular, miniature version of the original Nintendo Entertainment System.

The console was intended as a limited-time offering — it went on sale in late 2016 and was discontinued in April 2017.

Between the low price and the heavy draw of Nintendo nostalgia, the NES Classic Edition was a major hit. It was nearly impossible to find as a result.

And now, on June 29, Nintendo is bringing back the console.

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Nintendo says that the NES Classic Edition and the Super NES Classic Edition "are expected to be available through the end of the year."

It's great news for anyone who missed out on a chance to buy the NES Classic Edition during its brief window of availability. The only other way to buy one at this point is to go through third-party resellers like eBay, where prices are often triple or more the original $60 cost of the console.

Nintendo

The new production run of the NES Classic Edition mirrors the original run.

"NES Classic Edition features 30 classic NES games such as the original 'Super Mario Bros.,' 'The Legend of Zelda,' and 'Donkey Kong,'" Nintendo said in a release.

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In so many words, the same 30 classic NES games that shipped with the first run of the NES Classic Edition will ship on the new production run as well.

Here's the full list of games on the NES Classic Edition:

Check out a video of the NES Classic Edition in action:

A cardboard baler — which compresses cardboard to make it easier to store and recycle — caught fire outside Tesla's factory in Fremont, California, on Thursday.

On Friday, the Fremont Fire Department said on Twitter that the cardboard baler caught fire after overheating. The department said the fire did not spread beyond the machine, but the machine and the tent it was housed in were damaged. There were no injuries, the department said.

A Tesla representative told Business Insider that the fire was in a structure that holds cardboard, wood, and paper products that are being recycled and that it was not near the open-air structure the company built to house a new assembly line for its Model 3 sedan. The fire did not affect vehicle production, the representative said, and Tesla is investigating what caused the fire.

On Sunday, a fire inside the factory shut the factory's body production line down for several hours. A Tesla representative said the fire did not cause any injuries or significant equipment damage.

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Tesla recently built a new vehicle assembly line outside the factory. The new line is housed in an open-air structure that CEO Elon Musk referred to on Twitter as "a giant tent." Musk said the assembly line was built in three weeks with "minimal resources" and that he preferred the open-air structure to the factory building.

The new assembly line comes as Tesla seeks to ramp up production for the Model 3. The company has repeatedly missed production goals for the vehicle, but during Tesla's annual shareholder meeting on June 5, Musk said it was on track to hit its goal of making 5,000 Model 3s a week by the end of the month.

The company has made about 30,000 Model 3s this year, according to internal documents reviewed by Business Insider and confirmed by two Tesla employees. A person familiar with Model 3 production told Business Insider that Tesla had made around 6,000 Model 3s this month as of Tuesday.

If you've worked for Tesla and have a story to share, you can contact this reporter at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

We're stoked to announce the addition of Specdrums, app-enabled musical rings that turn colors into sounds, to the Sphero family.

Get more details below, and be the first to know when Specdrums become available for purchase so you can stop beatboxing. https://t.co/P5xdpX583c pic.twitter.com/fbH5WcggnA

— Sphero (@Sphero) June 22, 2018