By Aarav Sapra
There were signs of disturbance at Tesla when the electric car company told employees it would lay off more than 6,000 employees to cut costs. The job cuts, now totaling around 14,000 employees, have become “necessary” as the company faces competition from other electric car companies and declining sales. These management changes are usually led by Elon Musk, who can be pretty unpredictable, for instance, when he fired 80% Twitter employees in 2022. Musk does not have a plan to reverse his declining car sales, and firing a majority of his employees to cut costs allows him to have more money funded for more important projects such as the autonomous taxi or his full self-driving software.
Musk also talks about how this is a crucial aspect of the company, as written in an email that he sent out to many of his employees. “As we prepare the company for the next phase of growth, it is essential to look at every aspect of the company for cost reductions and increasing productivity. There is nothing I hate more, but it must be done,” he wrote. Furthermore, this later resulted in one of Elon Musk’s best employees and Tesla’s best managers resigning from his job. Drew Baglino, a senior vice president, played a significant role in the company’s rise to become one of the most dominant electric car manufacturers. “I made the difficult decision to move on from Tesla after 18 years yesterday,” Mr. Baglino said in a post on social media. However, it is later suspected that Mr. Baglino may have been to blame for some of Tesla’s recent troubles. Tesla also appeared to be losing an executive key to winning approval for Tesla’s self-driving technology. Rohan Patel, Tesla’s head of policy and business development, also quietly reported to X that he was leaving the company.
Many of Tesla’s workers are based at four large car factories in California, Texas, Shanghai, and near Berlin. Tesla also has a factory in Buffalo, NY, that produces charging equipment and a factory near Reno, Nevada, that makes batteries. While Elon may have his problems for Tesla, car companies like Hyundai are starting to dominate the electric car industry. Jose Munoz, president of Hyundai Motor, said customers had been willing to pay more for Hyundai electric cars than they would for comparable Teslas. He also said, “At the beginning, Tesla was premium. Now, we’re premium.”
