As per an internal email published by Electrek, Tesla is preparing to lay off more than 10 percent of its global workforce, just weeks after disclosing its first year-over-year fall in vehicle deliveries since 2020. That equates to at least 14,000 of the 140,473 workers that Tesla stated in its most recent yearly financial report. Which Tesla teams will be affected is unknown.
In the email obtained by Electrek, CEO Elon Musk stated, “There is nothing I hate more, but it must be done.” Musk stated that “we need to reorganize and streamline the company for the next phase of growth, about every 5 years” in a later post on X.
According to Bloomberg, Tesla senior vice president Drew Bagliano is also departing as part of the layoffs. (Baglino subsequently verified the exit on X.) Having held multiple positions for more than eighteen years, he was most recently in charge of Tesla’s energy and powertrain division. Additionally, Electrek saw that Rohan Patel, the company’s head of policy, no longer had the Tesla badge on his X account.
The news of the layoffs is only the most recent in a run of unfavorable events for Tesla. In addition to a projected slowdown in sales growth from January, the firm revealed a miss in delivery projections ahead of its quarterly earnings on April 23rd as it gets ready to introduce its next-generation vehicles.
Additionally, it has been reported that Tesla has shifted its focus to a new robotaxi, abandoning plans to create an affordable Model 2 that would have cost about $25,000.
This occurs as the company is under increasing pressure from the dual factors of declining EV demand and more reasonably priced EVs being produced by Chinese producers. Last year, BYD of China overtook Tesla as the leading manufacturer of electric vehicles worldwide, producing 3.02 million EVs to Tesla’s 1.81 million.
