The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health has fined Tesla motors a total of $89,000 for seven safety violations at the Fremont production facility.
Though a final report on the decision may not be available for weeks, the outcome was reported by the San-Jose Mercury News Thursday.
The fines stem from an incident which took place at Tesla’s Fremont assembly plant last November. An aluminum casting machine spilled molten metal on three workers. One of them was released from the hospital but two others remained in the burn ward.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk visited all three of the injured men in the hospital and made a brief statement to the media afterwards. Speaking of one of the injured men, Musk told the Mercury News, “his hands were burned pretty badly so it’s not clear what the recovery is going to be.”
Cal-OSHA reportedly found there was a safety feature broken on the machine which failed and that a safety shield was not in place. Tesla has said it plans to appeal the fine and claimed its accident rate “is twice as good as the auto industry average.”
Tesla continues to have strong sales of its Model S and is currently selecting two sites at which to construct a new battery factory. The battery factory is intended to allow Tesla to build batteries cheaper and in enough quantity to supply parts for a new, mid-priced electric car the company plans to begin selling in three years.
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