Tesla will cut roughly 9 per cent of its workforce as part of a restructuring led by chief executive Elon Musk.
Musk announced the layoffs in a lengthy email sent to the company’s more than 40,000 employees and shortly after, published the email on Twitter. The job cuts won’t be centered on factory workers but instead on salaried employees.
“As described previously, we are conducting a comprehensive organizational restructuring across our whole company. Tesla has grown and evolved rapidly over the past several years, which has resulted in some duplication of roles and some job functions that, while they made sense in the past, are difficult to justify today,” the email reads.
“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% of our colleagues across the company.”
Musk says the job cuts won’t affect the automaker’s ability to hit its Model 3 production targets.
Tesla went on to say that it will unable to achieve its mission of accelerating the world’s transition to clean energy unless “we eventually demonstrate that we can be sustainably profitable.”
No mention of the job cuts was made during Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting on June 5. During that event, Musk said he expected the automaker to hit its 5000 unit a week production goal for the Model 3 by the end of June. Additionally, the company thinks it can be profitable later this year.
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