Electric vehicle (EV) automaker Tesla will be cutting more than 10 percent of its global workforce as the company deals with a slowdown in EV sales and general obstacles to growth.
Tesla chief executive officer Elon Musk made the announcement to staff in an internal email, which was reviewed by the Wall Street Journal. Musk cited cutting costs and enhancing productivity as reasons behind the layoffs.
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“As part of the effort, we have done a thorough review of the organization and made the difficult decision to reduce our headcount by more than 10 percent globally,” he said. “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.”
Musk claimed that Tesla’s rapid growth over the past few years led to a duplication of jobs at many of the factories they upscaled. At the end of 2023, Tesla had more than 140,000 employees globally per its annual report.
As Valuetainment previously reported, Tesla reported its first year-over-year decrease in quarterly deliveries since 2020. It delivered about 387,000 vehicles in the first three months of 2024.
Several months ago, Tesla Motors, long the king of electric vehicles (EV), was surpassed in quarterly sales by Chinese company BYD for the first time: BYD reported sales of 526,000 fully-electric vehicles in quarter four (Q4) 2023, while Tesla only sold about 485,000 in that same timeframe.
Tesla delivered a total of 1.81 million vehicles globally in 2023. It hit its annual target, but there was a slight slowdown in its rate of growth (only 38 percent higher than 2022…). It remained ahead of BYD in terms of full-year sales. BYD sold 1.6 million vehicles last year, which was an increase of 70 percent from where they were in 2022.
Shane Devine is a writer covering politics and business for VT and a regular guest on The Unusual Suspects. Follow Shane’s work here.
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