Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk has dismissed two top officials and plans to sack hundreds of employees working under them because of dwindling sales of electric cars and the pace of job cuts globally, the media reported on Tuesday.
At the end of 2023, Tesla had 140,473 employees globally.
Those sacked are Rebecca Tinucci, senior director of the electric vehicle maker’s Supercharger business since 2018, and Daniel Ho, head of the new vehicles program since 2013, who left office on Tuesday morning, the report said.
Musk, the second wealthiest man worldwide with over USD 205 billion in personal wealth, also plans to dismiss everyone working for Tinucci and Ho, including the roughly 500 employees who work in the Supercharger group.
Tesla’s public policy team, which was led by former executive Rohan Patel, will also be dissolved, the report said.
“Hopefully these actions are making it clear that we need to be hardcore about headcount and cost reduction,” Musk wrote in an email to officials. “While some of the exec staff are taking this seriously, most are not yet doing so.”
Two other senior executives — Patel and battery development chief Drew Baglino — announced their departures earlier this month when Tesla also ordered the layoffs of more than 10 percent of its workforce.
Tesla is grappling with falling sales and an intensifying price war, which led to its quarterly revenue falling for the first time since 2020, the company reported last week.
Musk made progress towards rolling out Tesla’s advanced driver-assistance package in China, the epicenter of the EV price war, during a surprise visit to Beijing on Sunday.
That trip came just over a week after he scrapped a planned trip to India, where Tesla has long sought to start operations, due to “very heavy Tesla obligations.”
However, he is expected to make an early India trip soon after the results of the ongoing Lok Sabha elections are announced on June 4.