Tesla CEO Elon Musk laid off two senior executives and plans to fire hundreds more after falling sales and already announced job cuts that he considered not enough, according to a report.
The two senior executives who were fired were Rebecca Tinucci, senior director of the electric vehicle maker’s Supercharger business, and Daniel Ho, head of the new vehicles program. This is according to a report from The Information, citing an email from Mr. Musk to his two executives.
Mr. Musk is also planning to lay off the entire teams below the two executives, with Ms. Tinucci’s supercharger team consisting of 500 people. The Tesla CEO also plans to dissolve the company’s public policy team, headed by former executive Rohan Patel.
“Hopefully these actions are making it clear that we need to be absolutely hard core about headcount and cost reduction,” Mr. Musk wrote in the email, according to the report. “While some on exec staff are taking this seriously, most are not yet doing so.”
The electric vehicle maker had 140,473 employees globally at the end of 2023.
Mr. Ho joined Tesla in 2013 and was a program manager in the development of the Model S, the 3, and the Y before being put in charge of all new vehicles, while Ms. Tinucci joined in 2018 as a senior product manager, according to their LinkedIn profiles.
Two other senior leaders—Mr. Patel and battery development chief Drew Baglino—announced their departures in April, when Tesla also ordered the layoff of more than 10 percent of its workforce.
Tesla’s Job Cuts
Tesla recently laid off more than 3,300 workers in California and more than 2,600 workers in Texas, shortly after reporting a 9 percent revenue drop.
In California, the company laid off about 2,267 workers across multiple Fremont locations and an additional 486 employees across five Palo Alto sites.
An additional 515 employees were laid off across eight locations in Lathrop, which is located in San Joaquin County, where Tesla operates a battery factory. Another 64 jobs were cut in Burbank.
Despite the job cuts, Mr. Musk touted Tesla’s job creation efforts in California in a post on the social media platform X on April 23, stating that the company has “now created over 30,000 manufacturing jobs in California.”
Elsewhere in the April 22 notices, Tesla announced the layoff of 2,688 workers in the Austin, Texas, area, where it is headquartered and now has a major Tesla Gigafactory, according to a notice obtained by The Epoch Times.
The move comes after Tesla reported a 9 percent drop in revenue compared to a year ago. The company confirmed revenue of $21.3 billion in the first quarter, down from $23.33 billion a year earlier and missing analysts’ expectations.
Analysts, on average, had estimated it at $22.15 billion.
These layoffs also came after Tesla announced that it was cutting 285 jobs in Buffalo, New York, as part of its workforce reduction plans.
The industrialist CEO said in an internal memo to workers that the automaker plans to slash at least 14,000 jobs, although he did not provide details about which departments would be impacted by the cuts.
Mr. Musk said the reason for the cuts was duplication of roles and job functions.
“There is nothing I hate more, but it must be done. This will enable us to be lean, innovative, and hungry for the next growth phase,” he said.
Katabella Roberts and Reuters contributed to this report.
