Experts say Tesla has repeated car industry mistakes from the 1980s

"Excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake," Musk tweeted recently. "To be precise, my mistake. Humans are underrated."

Robots are supposed to allow production of more cars with fewer workers, but one ironic consequence of over-automation is that it can actually require more workers. Ingrassia and White report that GM's Hamtramck plant had around 5,000 workers on its payroll in the mid-1980s, compared to 3,700 workers at a nearby Ford plant with many fewer robots. Yet the Ford plant was "outproducing Hamtramck by a wide margin."