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Elon Musk took to micro-blogging site Twitter to confirm that Tesla will soon lay off around 3000 employees. Musk informed his employees about the decision via an email that got leaked online, after which he himself posted the screenshots of the entire announcements in order to avoid any confusion.
Updated : Jun 13, 2018, 04:44 PM IST
Elon Musk took to micro-blogging site Twitter to confirm that Tesla will soon lay off around 3000 employees. Musk informed his employees about the decision via an email that got leaked online, after which he himself posted the screenshots of the entire announcements in order to avoid any confusion.
"Tesla has grown and evolved rapidly over the past several years, which has resulted in some duplications of roles and some job functions. As part of this effort, and the need to reduce costs and become profitable, we have made the difficult decision to let go of approximately 9 percent of our colleagues across the company," Musk wrote in his email.
"We are making this hard decision now so that we never have to do this again," he said.
Musk also clarified that just the salaried employees will be impacted by the decision and the planned layoffs will not affect the production of the Model 3 as there will be no production associates are being be cut.
Difficult, but necessary Tesla reorg underway. My email to the company has already leaked to media. Here it is unfiltered: pic.twitter.com/4LToWoxScx
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 12, 2018
He said that Tesla (TSLA) is still looking for the right candidates for its key positions and will eventually expand its production staff.
Musk said that the job cuts are part of Tesla's restructuring process. He also added that the layoffs should help reduce costs and hopefully will make the firm profitable.
He emphasised on the fact that Tesla has never made an annual profit. "We will never achieve [our] mission unless we eventually demonstrate that we can be sustainably profitable," he wrote in the letter.
"It is very difficult to say goodbye," Elon Musk said in the letter. He added that affected employees will receive "significant salary and stock vesting," proportionate to the time they spent at the company.
Meanwhile on Tuesday, Musk informed that the new Tesla Roadster could come with not one or two but “10 small rocket thrusters” for “top speed”. Elon Musk made a surprise unveiling back in November 2017 when he presented the new Roadster, a sports car that he claims will be able to go from 0 to 60-mph in just 1.9 seconds, making it the “fastest production car ever” made.
The new Roadster is due in 2020 and is expected to cost $250,000, have a 200-kWh battery and supposedly drive 620 miles per charge. Already these are ambitious specs, and whether or not they factored in “rocket thrusters,” who knows.