Elon Musk revealed in an interview published on Wednesday that Tesla's new facilities in Texas and Germany are "losing billions of dollars" as the electric vehicle manufacturer struggles with production as a result of supply chain breakdowns and battery shortages.

"Both Berlin and Austin factories are gigantic money furnaces right now," said Musk in the interview with Tesla Owners of Silicon Valley, an official Tesla-recognized club, recorded on May 31. "It's really like a giant roaring sound, which is the sound of money on fire."

As he revealed employment cutbacks of up to 3.5 percent, Musk told Bloomberg earlier this week that supply shortages pose the largest threat to Tesla's ability to grow.

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Musk said in his interview with the Tesla Owners of Silicon Valley that pandemic-related shutdowns in China this year had proven "very, very difficult" for both Tesla's Shanghai factory and other plants elsewhere.

The Austin factory in particular was "losing insane money" as it faced challenges producing Tesla's new 4680 batteries and "the tooling necessary" for making its conventional 2170 batteries "is stuck in China," Musk said.

"Overwhelmingly our concern is, how do we keep the factories operating so we can pay people and not go bankrupt?"

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