Former Tesla employees speaking to Reuters have revealed that their department (North America deliveries) saw 65% of workers in the department lose their jobs in recent cutbacks. According to the sources, the North America deliveries team was about 230-people strong but after the recent tightening up of the firm, 150 of those employees have lost their jobs. The reason for the cuts to this department was put down to the lack of sales in that market.
Last year, Tesla sold 145,610 Model 3s at prices well above the long-promised $35,000. Unfortunately for the firm, once it had picked clean the list of buyers willing to spend in excess of $40,000, sales slumped. Speaking to Reuters, the two former employees said:
“There are not enough deliveries. You don’t need a team because there are not that many cars coming through.
We sold through just about every car we had on the ground and we called almost every being on the planet who had ever expressed desire to own a Tesla to let them know the tax credit was expiring.”
Even though the electric car manufacturer has run out of customers in North America right now, when the $35,000 Model 3 arrives, possibly in mid-2019, demand could pick up again. One of the employees said that if Tesla offers a really good car at that price point and is able to blow “away the competition” they could “see demand going through the roof.”
It’s not known where other cuts were made in the firm. In total it cut 7% of the workforce or about 3,000 workers. Now that we know 150 were cut from deliveries in North America, that leaves 2,850 workers unaccounted for.
Source: Reuters