Electric vehicle giant, Tesla announced last week that it would be laying off another 601 employees in California as the company continues to downsize as it faces declining sales and stiff price competition.
Tesla has been undertaking a series of layoffs worldwide that began in mid-April when chief executive Elon Musk announced a 10 percent cut in Tesla’s workforce, which, as of late 2023, totaled just over 140,000 workers.
Since then, Tesla has initiated several rounds of layoffs as Musk sought to cut its workforce by as much as 20 percent.
In late April, Musk fired the entire Supercharging team responsible for Tesla’s network of charging stations.
The decision set a shockwave through the industry and prompted Musk to pledge in early May to invest over $500 million to expand Tesla’s charging network. Musk also said the company would dial back on adding new charging stations to the network and focus instead on improving existing locations and uptime.
Tesla has been instrumental in helping the Biden administration achieve its goal of setting up half a million charging stations in the US within the next decade.
Recently, Tesla announced that it was rehiring some of the Supercharging team that Musk fired in late April, including the team’s director of charging, Max de Zegher.
The current round of layoffs in California is expected to begin in late June and will affect employees from the Tesla facilities in Fremont and Palo Alto, according to a notice the company filed with the state.
In April, Tesla announced that it was laying off more than 6,000 workers in Texas and California as part of the company’s efforts to reduce costs.
Other job reductions included 285 workers from Tesla’s New York facilities in Buffalo which house the labeling team for Tesla’s Autopilot driver assistance software and make the company’s fast-charging equipment.
