Elon Musk to layoff thousands of Tesla workers as electric vehicle demand plunges

Tesla has reportedly confirmed it will lay off approximately 14,000 members of staff to respond to growing competition from China.
The company this week told staff it would shorten production shifts at its Gigafactory in Texas amid multiple reports of upcoming redundancies.
Elon Musk’s automotive company could soon be cutting 10 percent of its workforce – leaving thousands of staff home.
In a leaked internal memo, Musk described the decision as “difficult” but “important” to prepare for Tesla’s “next phase.”
He wrote: “Over the years, we have grown rapidly with multiple factories scaling around the globe. With this rapid growth there has been duplication of roles and job functions in certain areas.
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“As we prepare the company for our next phase of growth, it is extremely important to look at every aspect of the company for cost reductions and increasing productivity.
“As part of this effort, we have done a thorough review of the organisation and made the difficult decision to reduce our headcount by more than 10pc globally.
Speculation about possible redundancies comes after the company faced backlash from employees over delays in delivering performance reviews and pushing prices up earlier this year.
Tesla kicked off the year with a fairly abysmal quarter, with deliveries experiencing a severe drop year-on-year.
In early April, Tesla said that it delivered 386,810 vehicles worldwide from January through March, almost nine percent below the 423,000 it sold in the same quarter of last year.
It was the first year-over-year quarterly sales decline in nearly four years. Sales also fell short of even the most bearish Wall Street expectations.
Auto industry analysts polled by FactSet were looking for 457,000 vehicle deliveries from Tesla Inc. That’s a shortfall of more than 15 percent.
Tesla kicked off the year with a fairly abysmal quarter, with deliveries experiencing a severe drop year-on-year.
But TD Cowen Analyst Jeffrey Osborne wrote in a note to investors that weaker March sales indicate that incentives, including discounts and a free trial of “Full Self Driving” software, “did not work as demand deteriorated.”
Despite the sales decline, Tesla was able to retake its global EV sales crown from China’s BYD, which sold just over 300,000 electric vehicles during the quarter, Osborne wrote.
In its letter to investors in January, Tesla predicted “notably lower” sales growth this year.