Musk's new round of layoffs has once again fired Tesla executives

According to foreign news reports, after laying off more than 10% of its global workforce, Tesla laid off more employees, including the company's senior executives and long-term senior employees, especially the entire Supercharging team and executives responsible for negotiations on the global adoption of NACS.

Tesla had news of a round of mass layoffs at the beginning of the previous week.

The layoffs across the company are quite extensive. Tesla shortened production shifts at Gigafactory Texas and cleaned up several teams related to key projects there.

One of those leaders is former vice president of powertrain and energy engineering, Drew Baglino, who has been with the company for 18 years and led the 4680 battery project. While his resignation has been publicly described as voluntary, it is speculated to be related to disappointment with the progress of the 4680 project.

During the layoffs, Tesla also lost a key executive at Rohan Patel, head of policy and business development.

As we learned last week, the company also laid off an entire new advertising team.

But when we first heard that Tesla was about to lay off its workforce, we heard rumors that the layoffs could involve up to 20% of the company's workforce. We've seen other signals that layoffs may be imminent, but the specific hint comes from an anonymous source within Tesla who is right about the timing of the layoffs, but not about the size of the layoffs.

Now, CEO Elon Musk has sent an email to executives to finalize plans for more layoffs.

The Information first reported that Rebecca Tinucci, Tesla's senior director of EV charging and a six-year veteran, will leave the company on Tuesday to join most of the staff. Her 500-person charging team.

Tinucci is responsible for the launch of Supercharger, which means that the layoffs on the Supercharger team may reflect a change in Tesla's direction.

Tesla has been so successful in getting manufacturers to adopt its NACS plugs – a Tinucci-led effort that landed her on the TIME 100 Climate list – leading many to believe that Tesla will be able to run a profitable energy delivery business for the long haul to come.

The email said Tesla will continue to build some new Superchargers and will complete charging stations under construction. But the removal of the team could mean less system build-out – at this point, if anything, requires faster deployment of charging stations.

Another executive who has been laid off is Daniel Ho, a 10-year veteran who is director of vehicle programs and new product initiatives and has worked as a project manager for the Model S, 3 and Y, having previously spent 12 years in a product role at Ford.

Tesla has taken a pause between growth phases in recent quarters, expecting more modest sales growth until the release of next-generation vehicles such as cheaper "Model 2" and robo-taxi products. There has been some debate about what form these products will take, but the dismissal of the head of the new product program also reflects a potential confusion within the team.

In addition, much of the members of former executive Rohan Patel's public policy team will be phased out – at a time when many public policy challenges around DC charging, home charging, emission standards, climate change, and political hostility to advanced EV technology remain looming.

In his typical ranting tone, Musk said he wanted Tesla to be "absolutely firm" on the issue of layoffs, and said that executives whose subordinates "clearly failed the good, necessary, and trustworthy tests" would also find themselves fired. — hinting that he wants these executives to fire more employees or get fired themselves.

All of this news comes at a critical time for Tesla, which missed quarterly earnings expectations, with deliveries and earnings expectations falling sharply below expectations, and a rare year-over-year decline in sales.

Tesla's layoffs come at a time when many other companies in the tech industry are also laying off workers, and it's clearly a game of following the leaders, while the industry remains highly profitable.

Electrek's view

First of all, there is absolutely no point in firing the Supercharger team. Supercharging is an incredible opportunity for Tesla, especially now that everyone else has adopted NACS.

From now on, Tesla has a fairly simple business case for becoming the leading "gas station of the future". With its experience and leadership in Superchargers, more reliable and better designed charging stations, and an existing business footprint with numerous charging stations installed around the world, the company has a natural lead. With the entire industry supporting NACS, the business case becomes even stronger.

It's absolutely insane to fire an entire team when the company has won so much, when there are billions of public dollars available for expansion, which would not have been possible without the adoption of industry NACS, which in turn was spearheaded by Tinucci's negotiations, and when there is a lead to hold. This move alone would undermine my confidence in Tesla's CEO – if I still have one.

Regarding the overall layoffs, we noted in our coverage of Tesla's layoffs that the worst part of this situation is that they have greatly affected morale. We don't think Tesla's morale will be high right now after the mass layoffs, but there can be at least a sense of relief after a round of mass layoffs is over.

But if Tesla is still laying off employees, then that sense of ease is gone, and employees will still wonder if they will come to work without a job, as we heard a lot of employees experience on the first day of layoffs.

While the last layoffs were offensive enough, the ongoing layoffs could have even worse consequences, considering that Tesla demanded $55 billion in compensation for its CEO just days after firing 14,000 employees. The $55 billion could pay these employees six-figure wages for 40 years. It's a sizable payday for part-time CEOs, and it's made worse by the fact that more employees who may still be struggling could lose their livelihoods.

Presumably, there may be even more layoffs. One source was right about the upcoming layoffs, but not entirely about the size or timing of the layoffs, telling us that there could be another 5% of the workforce, including executives and long-term employees dating back to the Roadster era. These layoffs appear to be close to rumors (albeit on a smaller scale), but there may be more to come. Follow the news of this space.