Tesla Lay Off 10% of its Workforce

Tesla, the superstar of the worlds EV manufacturers, have announced that they are laying-off some 10% of its global workforce as competition in the EV Sector heats up.

Taken from an internal memo at Tesla and reported by Business Insider, media darling Elon Musk told the staff that “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.”

Tesla, which is the most valuable global vehicle market by virtue of its share price, had a total of 140,473 employees and it is from here after a thorough reorganisation that Elon Musk hopes to make sufficient savings to keep his dream of an all-electric future alive.

The cuts are at all levels of the company and include the likes of Andrew Baglino who had been with the company for 19 years and was the head of Tesla’s powertrain and energy engineering team since 2019.  Alongside him in the unemployment line will be Rohan Patel who was the head of the public policy and business development department.

Both executives were magnanimous with their parting comments.  Baglino thanked the company for letting work at the highest level and Patel waxed lyrical about the opportunity to lead big initiatives and the “never-say-die attitude of the company”.

The departures of such senior executives probably means that Tesla is moving into its next phase of being. 

It is obvious that the major growth phase is not as successful as they had hoped for but many analysts are saying that the lay-offs are just a sign that all EV manufacturers are under increased cost pressure.

In actual fact it is probably a bit more fundamental than that. The EV market has been developing new models with fancy gismos at a breathtaking pace — Tesla has not.

They have been plodding along with their new offerings, and many of them have been mired in bad publicity like the recent event of dead Tesla’s in the cold or being able to burn under water.

There has also been the broader macro-economics of high interest rates which has sapped consumers appetite for big-ticket items. 

Most families now are getting an EV as a second car, this generally means that it will be the lower cost option that they are going for and frankly Tesla’s do not stack up well in that department against the massively subsidised Chinese offerings.