Tesla has announced layoffs of “more than 10%” of its global workforce in an internal company-wide email. We exclusively reported yesterday that Tesla was prepping a massive layoff.
Then, over the weekend, we heard rumors that these layoffs were about to happen, which came to us from multiple independent sources, as we reported on yesterday. The rumors indicated that layoffs could be as high as 20%, and in addition we heard that Tesla would shorten Cybertruck production shifts at Gigafactory Texas (despite CEO Elon Musk’s recent insistence that Cybertruck is currently production constrained).
Now those rumors have been confirmed – though with a lower number – in a company-wide email sent by Musk, which leaked soon after it was sent. The full text of the email is below:
Over the years, we have grown rapidly with multiple factories scaling around the globe. With this rapid growth there has been duplication of roles and job functions in certain areas. As we prepare the company for our next phase of growth, it is extremely important to look at every aspect of the company for cost reductions and increasing productivity.
As part of this effort, we have done a thorough review of the organization and made the difficult decision to reduce our headcount by more than 10% globally. There is nothing I hate more, but it must be done. This will enable us to be lean, innovative and hungry for the next growth phase cycle.
I would like to thank everyone who is departing Tesla for their hard work over the years. I’m deeply grateful for your many contributions to our mission and we wish you well in your future opportunities. It is very difficult to say goodbye.
For those remaining, I would like to thank you in advance for the difficult job that remains ahead. We are developing some of the most revolutionary technologies in auto, energy and artificial intelligence. As we prepare the company for the next phase of growth, your resolve will make a huge difference in getting us there.
Thanks, Elon
Additionally there are reports that some employees have already been locked out of system access.
While we don’t have an exact percentage, “more than 10%” means at least 14,000 employees will be laid off, as Tesla’s employee headcount is somewhere on the order of 140,000 total employees (Notably, Tesla’s headcount has not experienced as much “rapid growth” in recent years as it has in the past, making that line of the email ring somewhat hollow).
And we don’t know which specific teams will be most or least affected by Tesla’s layoffs, but two well-known Tesla executives are now missing the “Tesla-affiliated” badge on twitter – Drew Baglino and Rohan Patel.
Baglino is still listed as Senior VP of Powertrain and Energy on Tesla’s website, and Patel is Tesla’s Policy chair who has also served as an impromptu Tesla PR arm on twitter, commenting on news in the place of Tesla’s still incomprehensibly-nonexistent PR department.
While this may not mean anything, the badge does still exist and is shown on Franz von Holzhausen and Martin Viecha‘s profiles, so it is conspicuous that it is missing from the aforementioned executives.
The news follows a bad quarterly delivery report in which Tesla significantly missed delivery estimates, and had a rare year-over-year reduction in sales. While Tesla does not break out sales by geographical region, the main dip seems to have come from China, where Chinese EV makers are ramping quickly both in the domestic and export market.
Tesla will deliver its quarterly profits report next Tuesday, April 23. Analysts estimate that Tesla will still turn a profit of around 50 cents a share, down from 85 cents a share in Q1 2023.
In previous quarters, Tesla has guided for a “pause” inbetween growth phases, expecting that sales growth would be more modest until the release of next-gen vehicles like the ~$25,000 Model 2 (though Reuters recently reported that Musk wants to shift Tesla’s focus to a robotaxi model, which Musk denied just hours before announcing the robotaxi unveiling event).
Tesla’s layoffs come at a time when many other companies in the tech industry are laying off staff, in an apparent game of follow-the-leader while industry profits are still high.
Electrek’s Take
One issue I’ve always had with Tesla is that, if anything, it feels like headcount in the company is too low, not too high. There are so many issues that seem to fall through the cracks (both on a high and low level – Tesla owners, have you ever had trouble getting in touch with someone in service?), and I think the reason for this is because Tesla employees are often overworked. This leads to burnout and turnover, a lack of institutional memory, and a lack of ownership for certain problems that don’t get solved.
Tesla owes a lot of its success to its “startup mentality,” where it’s all hands on deck to grow the company that is shaking up a couple of the largest entire sectors on earth – automotive and energy. The fact that it has shaken up these sectors so successfully is proof that this approach has been effective.
And that helps in recruiting as well – there are a lot of jobs that claim they are changing the world, but Tesla can really claim that it legitimately is on the vanguard of the changing transportation industry. That’s a great way to recruit the best and brightest, and as a result, the company hasn’t had to worry much about losing talent since it has such a recruitment advantage and can take its pick of the brightest minds out there (though that recruitment advantage could be changing, given Musk’s increasingly distasteful behavior).
However, Tesla is 20 years old now. It’s an enormous and established company. It needs to mature and have more established processes, less turnover, and more security for its employees. These sorts of things help reduce errors and increase morale.
While these layoffs are a reaction to a reduction in sales (but not a loss of money if analysts are to be believed – Tesla is likely still profitable, though we’ll hear more next Tuesday), they can’t be helping with morale.
Remaining employees will wake up to an email from a CEO who is increasingly absent as he spends all of his time addicted to an app he wasted $44 billion on (yet demands more stock while firing 10% of the company), see their already-large workloads get larger, and wonder if the feeling of changing the world is really worth all these newly-apparent downsides. Maybe they’ll wonder if getting poached by the new tech buzzword wouldn’t be so bad.
Which is a shame, because we do need Tesla to keep pushing things forward, and to keep attracting the best and brightest. While Pandora’s box is open and EVs are here to stay at this point, regardless Tesla’s ups and comparatively-rare downs, the rest of the industry is still trying hard to pump the brakes on the transition, even if it means America will be less competitive if they get their way.
Tesla is one of the few entities that is large enough and committed enough to dragging those timelines forward, whether the rest of the industry likes it or not. We need a healthy Tesla, and for that, we need good employee morale.
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The e-bike industry in the West has long been a tale of two territories. North Americans enjoy higher speeds and power limits for their electric bicycles while Europeans are held to much stricter (i.e. slower and lower) speed and power limits. However, things might change based on current discussions on rewriting European e-bike regulations.
New power levels are not totally without precedent, either. The UK briefly considered doubling its own e-bike power limit from 250 watts (approximately 1/3 horsepower) to 500 watts, though the move was ultimately abandoned.
But this time, the call for more power is coming from within the house – i.e., Germany. The Germans are the undisputed leaders and trend setters in the European e-bike market, accounting for around two million sales of e-bikes per year. Home to leading e-bike drive makers like Bosch, the country has yet another advantage when it comes to making – or regulating – waves in the industry.
And while there aren’t any pending law changes, the largest German trade organization ZIV (Zweirad-Industrie-Verband), which is highly influential in achieving such changes, is now discussing what it believes could be pertinent updates to current EU electric bike regulations.
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Some of the new regulations involve creating rules maxing out power at levels such as 400% or 600% of the human pedaling input. But a key component of the proposed plan includes changing the present day power limit of e-bikes from 250W of continuous power at the motor to 750W of peak power at the drive wheel.
The difference includes some nuance, since continuous power is often considered more of a nominal figure, meaning nearly every e-bike motor in Europe wears a “250W” or less sticker despite often outputting a higher level of peak power. Even Bosch, which has to walk the tight and narrow as a leader in the European e-bike drive market, shared that its newest models of motors are capable of peak power ratings in the 600W level. That’s still far from the commonly 1,000W to 1,300W peak power seen in US e-bike motors, but offers a nice boost over an actual 250W motor.
Other new regulations up for discussion include proposals to limit fully-loaded cargo e-bike weights to either 250 kg (550 lb) for two-wheelers or 300 kg (660 lb) for e-bikes with more than two wheels. As road.cc explained, ZIV also noted that, “separate framework conditions and parameters must be defined for cargo bikes weighing more than 300 kg (see EN 17860-4:2025) as they differ significantly from EPACs and bicycles in their dynamics, design and operation.” Such heavy-duty cargo e-bikes, which often more closely resemble small delivery vans than large cargo bikes, are becoming more common in the industry and have raised concerns about cargo e-bike bloat, especially in dedicated cycling paths.
It’s too early to say whether European e-bike regulations will actually change, but the fact that key industry voices with the power to influence policy are openly advocating for it suggests that new rules for the European market are a real possibility.
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China just laid out a plan to roll out over 100,000 ultra-fast EV charging stations by 2027 – and they’ll all be open to the public.
The National Development and Reform Commission’s (NDRC) joint notice, issued on Monday, asks local authorities to put together construction plans for highway service areas and prioritize the ones that see 40% or more usage during holiday travel rushes.
The NDRC notes that China’s ultra-fast EV charging infrastructure needs upgrading as more 800V EVs hit the road. Those high-voltage platforms can handle super-fast charging in as little as 10 to 30 minutes, but only if the charging hardware is up to speed.
China had 31.4 million EVs on the road at the end of 2024 – nearly 9% of the country’s total vehicle fleet. But charging access is still catching up. As of May 2025, there were 14.4 million charging points, or roughly 1 for every 2.2 EVs.
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To keep the grid running smoothly, China wants new chargers to be smart, with dynamic pricing to incentivize off-peak charging and solar and storage to power the charging stations.
To make the business side work, the government is pushing for 10-year leases for charging station operators, and it’s backing the buildout with local government bonds.
The NDRC emphasized that the DC fast chargers built will be open to the public. This is a big deal because a lot of fast chargers in China aren’t. For example, BYD’s new megawatt chargers aren’t open to third-party vehicles.
As of September 2024, China had expanded its charging infrastructure to 11.4 million EV chargers, but only 3.3 million were public.
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A U.S. Justice Department logo or seal showing Justice Department headquarters, known as “Main Justice,” is seen behind the podium in the Department’s headquarters briefing room before a news conference with the Attorney General in Washington, January 24, 2023.
Kevin Lamarque | Reuters
Federal prosecutors have charged two men in connection with a sprawling cryptocurrency investment scheme that defrauded victims out of more than $650 million.
The indictment, unsealed in the District of Puerto Rico, accuses Michael Shannon Sims, 48, of Georgia and Florida, and Juan Carlos Reynoso, 57, of New Jersey and Florida, of operating and promoting OmegaPro, an international crypto multi-level marketing scheme that promised investors 300% returns over 16 months through foreign exchange trading.
“This case exposes the ruthless reality of modern financial crime,” said the Internal Revenue Service’s Chief of Criminal Investigations Guy Ficco. “OmegaPro promised financial freedom but delivered financial ruin.”
From 2019 to 2023, Sims, Reynoso and their co-conspirators allegedly lured thousands of victims worldwide to purchase “investment packages” using cryptocurrency, falsely claiming the funds would be safely managed by elite forex traders, the Department of Justice said.
Prosecutors said the pair flaunted their wealth through social media and extravagant events — including projecting the OmegaPro logo onto the Burj Khalifa, Dubai’s tallest building — to convince investors the operation was legitimate.
A video posted to the company’s LinkedIn page shows guests in evening attire posing for photos and watching the spectacle in Dubai.
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In reality, authorities allege, OmegaPro was a pyramid-style fraud.
When the company later claimed it had suffered a hack, the defendants told victims they had transferred their funds to a new platform called Broker Group, the DOJ said. Users were never able to withdraw their money from either platform.
The two men face charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering, each carrying a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
The Justice Department, FBI, IRS-Criminal Investigation, and Homeland Security Investigations led the multiagency investigation, with help from international partners.