Tesla to cut salaried workforce by 10 per cent, Elon Musk

Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Tuesday reiterated that Tesla will fire 10 per cent. The billionaire now states that the electric car-making company will fire 10 per cent of its workforce in the next 3 months. The job cuts will amount to about a 3.5 per cent reduction in total headcount at the company, Musk said at the Qatar Economic Forum organised by Bloomberg. Tesla, now headquartered in Austin, Texas, has grown to about 100,000 employees globally and has hired rapidly in recent months. The job cuts, which have impacted everyone from human resources representatives to software engineers, caught many by surprise.

Musk said supply constraints are the biggest brake on Tesla's growth, rather than competition from rival automakers. “As anyone knows who has tried to order a Tesla, the demand for our cars is extremely high and the wait list is long,” he said. “This is not intentional and we’re increasing production capacity as fast as humanly possible.” “This has been a very tough quarter, primarily due to supply chain and production challenges in China,”  Musk said. 

Asked whether he saw competition in EVs coming from established global auto giants like Volkswagen and Ford Motor, which are pouring tens of billions of dollars into electrifying their fleets, or Chinese upstarts like Nio and Xpeng, Musk praised the Chinese firms.“I am very impressed with the car companies in China in general,” he said. “I think they are extremely competitive, hard working and smart.” Tesla’s Shanghai factory, capable of churning out around 2,100 cars a day in normal times, was shuttered for three weeks through mid-April during Shanghai’s months-long Covid-19 lockdown.