Tesla shares dropped on Monday morning after the firm announced plans to lay off ‘more than 10 per cent’ of its global workforce as demands for its electric vehicles start to falter in a highly competitive market.
CEO Elon Musk sent a company-wide email over the weekend announcing the layoffs, tech publication Electrek reported on Monday.
Musk, in the internal memo, said the ‘difficult decision’ to reduce staff will ‘enable us to be lean, innovative and hungry for the next growth phase cycle’.
‘There is nothing I hate more, but it must be done,’ the billionaire said, as cited in the memo, before thanking ‘everyone who is departing Tesla for their hard work over the years’.
Tesla, which is set to report its quarterly earnings on April 13, reported a decline in vehicle deliveries in the first quarter, its first in nearly four years and also below market expectations.
The firm, in a press release, blamed its fall in deliveries on a drop in EV car demand, the arson attack at its factory near Berlin and supply-chain issues caused by the Red Sea conflict.
Rumors of a looming layoff had been spreading over the last few months after Tesla asked managers to identify critical team members, paused some stock rewards and canceled some employees’ annual reviews, according to the report.
Tesla, the world’s largest automaker by market value, had 140,473 employees globally as of December 2023, according to its latest annual report. The reported cuts will affect about 14,000 workers.
The firm is also expected to shorten Cybertruck production shifts at its Gigafactory in Texas despite Musk having recently insisted that Cybertruck is currently production constrained.
The move comes as automakers across the world tighten their belts amid a slower than expected uptake of EVs.
BP has cut over a tenth of the workforce in its electric vehicle charging business and pulled it out of several markets after a bet on rapid growth in commercial EV fleets didn’t pay off, company sources said on Monday.
However, China’s electric vehicle market is understood to be booming, with Musk just last year hailing the country’s carmakers as being ‘by far our toughest competition’.
‘I think the Chinese car companies are extremely competitive,’ he said in November, warning: ‘There’s a lot of people out there who think that the top 10 car companies are going to be Tesla followed by nine Chinese car companies. I think they might not be wrong.’
At the time, Musk hailed the Chinese work ethic as being ‘incredible’ and said the country was ‘super good at manufacturing’, The Street.com reported.
He also said that Tesla considered ‘the Chinese league to be the most competitive’ and added that the firm does ‘very well in China because our China team is the best’.
Elon Musk’s Email To Tesla Employees That Announced Looming Mass Layoffs
Over the years, we have grown rapidly with multiple factories scaling around the globe. With this rapid growth there has been duplication of roles and job functions in certain areas. As we prepare the company for our next phase of growth, it is extremely important to look at every aspect of the company for cost reductions and increasing productivity.
As part of this effort, we have done a thorough review of the organization and made the difficult decision to reduce our headcount by more than 10% globally. There is nothing I hate more, but it must be done. This will enable us to be lean, innovative and hungry for the next growth phase cycle.
I would like to thank everyone who is departing Tesla for their hard work over the years. I’m deeply grateful for your many contributions to our mission and we wish you well in your future opportunities. It is very difficult to say goodbye.
For those remaining, I would like to thank you in advance for the difficult job that remains ahead. We are developing some of the most revolutionary technologies in auto, energy and artificial intelligence. As we prepare the company for the next phase of growth, your resolve will make a huge difference in getting us there.
Thanks, Elon
Source: Natasha Anderson