Tesla fires hundreds of employees a week after major profit slump
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Elon Musk is eliminating the Tesla team responsible for constructing electric vehicle charging stations in a new round of layoffs announced in an email on Monday.
The move has impacted at least 500 employees with some announcing they’d been laid off in social media posts.
George Bahadue, a senior manager for site acquisition and business development in commercial charging, expressed his regret in a LinkedIn post.
“To the Supercharger team, this is not the end,” he wrote. “It is the start of a new chapter. Keep your chins up and hold your heads up high.”
Musk also said that two executives – Rebecca Tinucci, senior director of the Supercharger group, and Daniel Ho, head of new products, would be leaving the company on Tuesday, according toThe Information, which first reported the news.
It’s not clear where all of the employees were based but both Ms Tinucci and Mr Ho are located in the San Francisco, California area.
The decision leaves the future of EV charging stations hanging in the balance and could have ripple effects across the electric car industry. Mr Musk, the company’s chief executive, recently made deals with Ford Motor and General Motors that would allow vehicles manufactured by other entities to use their supercharger stations.
Nearly all key players in the auto industry have made plans to switch the hardware and software in their vehicles to be compatible with the chargers. The company is not likely to stop making the chargers altogether.
Earlier this month, Tesla reported a 55 per cent drop in its first quarter profit. On Tuesday, Tesla stock dropped five per cent. Earlier this month, stock dipped below $150 per share, effectively wiping out all of the gains made in the last year.
Earlier this month, Tesla discounted five of their models by $5,000 in an effort to get more people to buy their vehicles after a sales slump. In the same week, the company announced it would be eliminating 10 per cent of its workforce, which totaled about 14,000 jobs across the globe.
Adding to the company’s woes, Musk also decided to recall 4,000 2024 Cybertrucks after noting that the accelerator pedal can get stuck, increasing the odds of causing a crash.
In a statement posted to X, Musk said, “Tesla still plans to grow the Supercharger network, just at a slower pace for new locations and more focus on 100 per cent uptime and expansion of existing locations.”
