On April 15, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced in an email to employees that the company would lay off more than 10% of its workforce globally, affecting more than 14,000 employees. Or affected by this news, Tesla's market value evaporated by more than 220 billion yuan on the same day.
Image source: Social media platform X
On the same day, Drew Baglino, Tesla's senior vice president of powertrain and energy business and a core executive, posted on social media platforms that he had made the decision to leave Tesla on the 14th. According to people familiar with the matter, the layoffs were more than 10%, and the optimization of individual departments reached about 50%, and some employees even found out that they had lost their jobs when they went to work on Monday.
On the evening of the 16th, Musk said that Tesla needs to carry out "radical organizational reforms" every five years or so, indirectly responding to the news of global layoffs, and some employees of the Shanghai Gigafactory said that they had also received official emails.
Layoffs, stock prices plummeting, executive departures, what's wrong with Tesla?
Is the decline in global deliveries the trigger?
In fact, this is the fifth large-scale layoff since Tesla laid off 2% of its workforce in 2017, and is already beginning to show signs of global vehicle deliveries this year.
Data shows that in the first quarter of this year, Tesla produced 433,000 electric vehicles worldwide, with about 386,800 deliveries, a year-on-year decrease of 8.5%, far lower than the 449,000 previously expected by analysts, and the lowest single-quarter delivery volume for Tesla since the third quarter of 2022, and the market value has now fallen by more than half after peaking in 2021.
Image source: Wall Street News
According to the wholesale shipment data released by the China Passenger Car Association, the output of Tesla's Shanghai Gigafactory in the first quarter of 2024 will be about 220,000 units, accounting for about 51% of its global production.
The decline in Tesla's electric vehicle deliveries this time may be the "last straw that breaks the camel's back". And since the Shanghai Gigafactory occupies almost all of its normal production capacity, this wave of layoffs is bound to ripple.
Image source: Qizhi official website
According to the enterprise platform, Tesla (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. was established in 2018, wholly owned by Tesla Motors Hong Kong, and the legal representative is Wang Hao, mainly engaged in the research and development, production and sales of electric vehicles, and the main products are Model S, Model X, Model 3 and other models.
Domestic car brands are contending, Tesla is no longer soaring?
When it comes to Tesla, we have to mention Xiaomi Automobile, which has been in the limelight recently. At the beginning of this month, Xiaomi SU7 Dading has exceeded 100,000, and the number of locked orders has exceeded 40,000, officially driving the domestic new energy automobile industry to "open the book".
Image source: Xiaomi Auto Official WeChat
In the past, the troika of new car companies was NIO, Xpeng and Ideal, which created a "miracle" for Chinese brands to enter the mid-to-high-end luxury car market. At the end of last year, Huawei officially released HarmonyOS Zhixing, fully empowering the smart electric vehicle industry and making the technical foundation of China's smart electric vehicles; at the end of March this year, Xiaomi Auto entered the game to be the "Misjie" of China's smart electric vehicle industry, bringing down the price of high-end cars.
Of course, let Yu Chengdong call it "too much in the industry", it is not just a new force. As a traditional car company, BYD has also become a leader in new energy vehicles in recent years, and at the beginning of the year, it played the "king bomb" operation, and the price of Qin PLUS/destroyer and other models dropped directly to about 79,800, and the slogan of "electricity is lower than oil" has also driven the "price reduction" trend of traditional car companies such as Changan and Wuling Hongguang.
Image source: BYD's latest announcement
In the case of such a volume, the reshuffle war of the new energy track has also intensified, and new car-making forces such as Gaohe Automobile, WM Motor, Aiways and Hengchi Automobile have been ruthlessly eliminated by the market. According to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, in the first quarter of this year, the production and sales of automobiles in mainland China exceeded 6 million, setting a new high for production and sales in the first quarter since 2019. Among them, BYD's new energy vehicle production in the first quarter was about 612,300 units, and the sales volume was about 626,300 units, an increase of 13.44% year-on-year.
It can be seen that BYD's sales of new energy vehicles in the first quarter have surpassed Tesla, and with the efforts of other domestic brands, Tesla's market is in jeopardy.
The rise of China's new energy vehicle industry depends on subsidies?
As a pioneer in the field of electric vehicles, Tesla entered China in 2012, officially completed the Shanghai Gigafactory in 2019, and started the sale of the domestically produced Model 3 in 2020, which instantly caused a sensation in the pure electric vehicle industry. However, it is also like a catfish, accelerating China's development in the new energy vehicle industry.
At present, China has gathered more than 1,200 pure electric vehicle-related enterprises, including a large number of high-tech enterprises and specialized and special new enterprises. The related enterprises are mainly distributed in Guangdong Province, Jiangsu Province and Zhejiang Province, among which Guangdong Province has the largest number of industry-related enterprises, reaching more than 160.
In the past decade, enterprises in China's pure electric vehicle industry have maintained a growth trend until 2022, and after 2022, they have begun to gradually slow down, and the incremental enterprises have shown a downward trend year by year. This is also because, firstly, the mainland promotes the full electrification of public sector vehicles and accelerates the electrification transformation of public sector vehicles, such as city buses, taxis, urban logistics and distribution vehicles, etc.; Third, in the development process of the electric vehicle industry, charging is one of the biggest pain points, so not only car companies are needed, but also batteries, charging piles, battery swap stations and Internet of vehicles and other supporting facilities are needed.
In the "new energy vehicle" industry, which involves a larger range, it can be seen that the existing enterprises and incremental enterprises in the new energy vehicle industry have maintained a growth trend before 2022, and will only begin to slow down after 2022.
Of course, the rise of China's new energy vehicle industry, especially the contention of domestic brands, has squeezed the living space of foreign-funded Tesla, and has also attracted a lot of criticism.
The European Union and other countries believe that the global electric vehicle market is flooded with affordable Chinese cars, and the reason why prices are low is because they have received huge state subsidies, and have opened countervailing investigations into electric vehicles imported from China. This month, the United States and Europe also claimed that China's electric vehicle industry is facing "overcapacity."
So, is the rapid rise of China's electric vehicle companies really because of subsidies?
According to the data of the enterprise, from the national to the district level, the number of supportive policies for pure electric vehicle-related industries has shown a continuous growth trend from 2020 to 2022, but it has begun to slow down from 2022, even in a wider range of "new energy vehicles" related industries, the number of policies has slowed down from 2022.
In fact, since 2014, the mainland has begun to implement new energy vehicle purchase subsidies and purchase tax exemptions, helping the new energy vehicle industry to expand the market by reducing the cost of consumer car purchases, and the relevant subsidy policies will continue until the end of 2022. At present, the mainland no longer focuses on subsidizing consumption, but has turned to the construction of new energy vehicle industry chain, new energy vehicle industry cluster construction and other industrial ecology and supporting public facilities.
Obviously, the rapid rise of China's new energy vehicle industry, the country's subsidy policy does play an important role, but the goal of industrial policy has never been to create an effective market, but to create a competitive advantage of enterprises in the economy, subsidies alone are far from enough to support the success of an industry. Therefore, whether it is a pure electric vehicle-related industry or a new energy vehicle-related industry, domestic car-making brands will show a trend of hundreds of schools of thought in 2024, relying more on continuous innovation in technology research and development and the advantages of China's perfect supply chain system.
According to the China Passenger Car Association, China exported 120,000 new energy passenger vehicles in March, of which pure electric vehicles accounted for 82.3% of new energy exports. Whether at home or overseas, China's new energy vehicle market in 2024 is a good show, and as China's new energy vehicle melee enters the second half, more domestic car brands have begun to go abroad and lead the global automotive trend.
But for Tesla, Musk has previously said that Tesla's growth rate in 2024 may be lower than in 2023, and Wedbush analyst Dan Ives also commented that Tesla's production and sales in the first quarter of this year are "an unexplained disaster". However, looking at the efforts of Chinese car brands in the new energy vehicle industry, Tesla's innovation in pure electric vehicles for many years is obviously insufficient, and this dilemma seems to have been doomed.