A few weeks after reporting its first year-over-year decline in vehicle deliveries since 2020, Tesla is now planning to lay off over ten percent of its global workforce, according to an internal company-wide email seen by Electrek. That works out to at least 14,000 of the 140,473 employees that Tesla reported in its latest annual earnings. It’s not clear which teams at Tesla will be impacted.
“There is nothing I hate more, but it must be done,” said Elon Musk, in the email published by Electrek. “This will enable us to be lean, innovative and hungry for the next growth phase cycle.”
Today’s development is the latest in a string of bad news for the EV maker. The company reported a miss in delivery estimates ahead of its quarterly earnings on April 23rd, alongside a predicted slowdown in sales growth back in January, which it attributed to manufacturing issues surrounding its next generation of vehicles.
Tesla has also reportedly abandoned its plans to produce an affordable Model 2 that would cost around $25,000 as it shifts to instead focus on a new robotaxi. This comes as the company faces mounting pressure from the one-two punch of waning demand and more affordable EVs made by Chinese manufacturers. Last year, Tesla lost the title of world’s top maker of electric vehicles to China’s BYD which produced 3.02 million EVs, compared to Tesla’s 1.81 million.