Tesla Fires Hundreds as Electric Car Production Drags

It has been reported that the automaker Tesla has fired hundreds of employees amongst signs showing the company is starting slow in their manufacturing of their vital Model 3 electric car.

The tech and automotive company based in Palo Alto, California has, according to numerous reports, dismissed several hundred of its workers. The story was originally reported by the Mercury News and was also reported by Reuters.

The dismissals happened from the aftermath of what Tesla defines as “an annual performance review” of the more than 33,000 employees that work for the company. Tesla did not go into further details.


The firings that have supposedly occurred includes employees that were engineers, factory employees, managers, and salespeople. 

This change comes as Tesla is trying to quickly expand their production of its new mass-market Model 3. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, has said the company by the end of the year would be making 5,000 cars each week. However, this goal could appear in jeopardy among the early stumbles the company is having.

It is not clear if any of the firings are connected to the manufacturing problems.

On October 6, Musk did acknowledge Tesla was tackling “bottlenecks” in the Model 3 production. The CEO also said the company was “diverting resources” to resolve production challenges with the Model 3. This is one of the factors in why the decision was made by the company to delay the reveal of an electric semi-truck by about three weeks.

In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing made by Tesla on October 2, the company states that “a handful” of its manufacturing subsystems have taken longer to activate than expected.”