Tesla has fired its entire 40-person “growth content” ad team as part of its recent massive round of layoffs. The ad team had been part of Tesla’s push to increase traditional advertising.
Since Tesla’s very beginning, the company has shied away from traditional advertising methods to sell its cars. Tesla still had marketing spend – events and so on – but just didn’t spend money to put paid advertisements on TV, on the internet, billboards, etc.
Instead, it focused on other methods to get its brand in front of people – for example, an early unique push to open Tesla stores in malls, rather than using traditional dealerships. Or its referral program, which turned owners into paid word-of-mouth advocates (incidentally, Tesla is shutting that down on April 30, but says it will bring it back in another form later). Or… blasting a Roadster into space.
But for a long time, there has been a push among advocates for Tesla to start advertising in mass media, as one of the few companies that is big enough and has enough money and interest to really make a full-throated case for EVs (as opposed to other companies, many of which focus on greenwashing or disinformation).
Finally, last year, a shareholder brought up the question of advertising at Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting, and CEO Elon Musk, who “hates advertising,” said “we’ll try a little advertising and see how it goes.“
Since then, Tesla started running ads in various media. This included video ads on YouTube, Facebook and, controversially, putting ads on Twitter after Tesla CEO Elon Musk wasted tens of billions of dollars (and tons of his own time) on it. We recently reported that Tesla has spent at least $200,000 on ads on Twitter.
But those ads apparently did not turn out to Musk’s liking, as today Bloomberg reported that Tesla has cut its entire 40-person “global growth content” ad team. Musk confirmed the layoffs on twitter in a reply to the Bloomberg article, saying that the ads, one of which highlighted the ability to turn your lock sound into a fart, were “too generic”:
The team was led by Alex Ingram, who had worked in marketing for Tesla since 2020. But the new “growth content” team only started in December, and Ingram was actively recruiting to grow it in the last few months. Another director, Jorge Milburn, who had been with Tesla for 9 years and built the company’s presence in Iberia before moving into a growth position in the Netherlands, was laid off as well.
The team’s “maiden voyage” was only last month, with a 30-minute livestream going over the details of the new Model 3 “Highland” refresh. That livestream was promoted by Musk seen by 4.2 million people according to twitter’s, uh, generous view count methodology.
The firings come as part of a volatile time for the company, which in the week since it laid off 10% of its staff (including two key executives) has also ended its referral program (perhaps temporarily), lowered the price of FSD software and of most of its cars, put its $25k car on the backburner, recalled its new Cybertruck, all while filing to ask for a $55billion payout for its CEO and to move the company’s incorporation to Texas.
All of this news comes in a month where Tesla announced bad quarterly delivery results, with a rare year-over-year drop in deliveries. The company will release its quarterly results tomorrow afternoon (and perhaps also unveil its Model 3 Ludicrous performance car).
Electrek’s Take
I’ve never particularly thought that Tesla did need to push into advertising. While ads are effective and marketing is necessary for any business, Tesla has never had any trouble selling cars before, with nearly every quarter in the company’s history resulting in higher sales than the year prior. For a long time, Tesla has been supply-constrained, not demand-constrained, so it didn’t really matter if it advertised or not.
However, last quarter specifically, Tesla was very much not supply-constrained. Inventory grew a lot last quarter, as Tesla produced many more cars than it sold.
This is precisely the time when a company could use a little advertising or marketing to manage the way its getting its name out in front of the public.
This is especially true when the company’s other primary marketing outlet is an outspoken CEO who has recently dedicated his time more towards boosting anti-semitic conspiracy theories than to boosting Tesla. This has turned off Tesla’s core demographics, which is having a significant effect on people’s desire to buy the company’s cars.
One might say that Tesla’s poor performance over the last quarter is an example of why this team was cut, since their methods were clearly not effective given Tesla’s sales results. But the team hadn’t even had time to get off the ground yet, so it seems premature to axe it this early on.
There’s a lot of ways that traditional advertising is boring, and that utilizing new methods to their maximum extent can help companies reach new customers in more interesting and efficient ways. Tesla has done a good job of the latter, so far.
But I think firing a whole team that’s meant to explore those methods, while also relying on your company’s part-time CEO (who’s seemingly more interested in getting in dumb fights and responding to racist/sexist/everything-else-ist memes on twitter) to do the bulk of Tesla’s outreach, is probably not the best way to get out of a sales slump.
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Tesla has launched a new accessory enabling you to “Macgyver” a couple of power outlets from the Cybertruck’s charge port.
It appears to be designed for the new cheaper Cybertruck, which doesn’t have power outlets in its bed.
Earlier this week, Tesla launched the Cybertruck Long Range RWD: a new, cheaper, and badly nerfed version of the electric pickup truck.
The new version is extremely disappointing as it is $9,000 more expensive than the Cybertruck RWD was supposed to be, and while it has more range than originally planned, Tesla has removed a ton of features, including some important ones.
Here’s what you lose with the Cybertruck RWD:
- You get a single motor RWD instead of Dual Motor AWD
- You lose the adaptive air suspension
- No motorized tonneau, but you have an optional $750 soft tonneau
- Textile seats instead of vegan leather
- Fewer speakers
- No rear screen for the backseat
- No power outlets in the bed
The last one has been pretty disappointing, as it can’t be that expensive to include, and Tesla is basically removing $20,000 worth of features for only a $10,000 difference with the Dual Motor Cybertruck.
But the automaker appears to have come up with a partial solution.
Tesla has launched a $80 ‘Powershare Outlet Adapter’ on its online store:
When combined with Tesla’s Gen 3 Mobile Connector plugged into the Cybertruck’s charge port, it gives you two 120V 20A power outlets.
Tesla describes the product:
Powershare Outlet Adapter allows you to power electronic devices using Mobile Connector and your Powershare-equipped vehicle’s battery. To use this adapter, plug Mobile Connector’s handle into your Powershare-equipped vehicle’s charge port and connect the adapter to the other end of your Mobile Connector. You can then use this adapter to plug in any compatible electronic device you want to power.
For now, Tesla says that this only works for the Cybertruck and you have to buy the $300 mobile charging connector, which doesn’t come with the truck.
Electrek’s Take
I guess it’s better than nothing, but I’m still super disappointed in the new trim. It makes no sense right now.
Not only you lose the 2x 120V, 1x 240V outlets in the bed, but you also lose the 2x 120V outlets in the cabin. Now, you can can pay $380 to have a “Macgyver” solution for 2 120V outlets in the back.
I’m convinced that Tesla designed this trim simply to make the $80,000 Cybertruck AWD look better value-wise.
It looks like Tesla took out about $20,000 worth of features while giving buyers only a $10,000 discount.
It’s just the latest example of Tesla losing its edge.
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The International Maritime Organization, a UN agency which regulates maritime transport, has voted to implement a global cap on carbon emissions from ocean shipping and a penalty on entities that exceed that limit.
After a weeklong meeting of the Marine Environment Protection Committee of the IMO and decades of talks, countries have voted to implement binding carbon reduction targets including a gradually-reducing cap on emissions and associated penalties for exceeding that cap.
Previously, the IMO made another significant environmental move when it transitioned the entire shipping industry to lower-sulfur fuels in 2020, moving towards improving a longstanding issue with large ships outputting extremely high levels of sulfur dioxide emissions, which harm human health and cause acid rain.
Today’s agreement makes the shipping industry the first sector to agree on an internationally mandated target to reduce emissions along with a global carbon price.
The agreement includes standards for greenhouse gas intensity from maritime shipping fuels, with those standards starting in 2028 and reducing through 2035. The end goal is to reach net-zero emissions in shipping by 2050.
Companies that exceed the carbon limits set by the standard will have to pay either $100 or $380 per excess ton of emissions, depending on how much they exceed limits by. These numbers are roughly in line with the commonly-accepted social cost of carbon, which is an attempt to set the equivalent cost borne by society by every ton of carbon pollution.
Money from these penalties will be put into a fund that will reward lower-emissions ships, research into cleaner fuels, and support nations that are vulnerable to climate change.
That means that this agreement represents a global “carbon price” – an attempt to make polluters pay the costs that they shift onto everyone else by polluting.
Why carbon prices matter
The necessity of a carbon price has long been acknowledged by virtually every economist. In economic terms, pollution is called a “negative externality,” where a certain action imposes costs on a party that isn’t responsible for the action itself. That action can be thought of as a subsidy – it’s a cost imposed by the polluter that isn’t being paid by the polluter, but rather by everyone else.
Externalities distort a market because they allow certain companies to get away with cheaper costs than they should otherwise have. And a carbon price is an attempt to properly price that externality, to internalize it to the polluter in question, so that they are no longer being subsidized by everyone else’s lungs. This also incentivizes carbon reductions, because if you can make something more cleanly, you can make it more cheaply.
Many people have suggested implementing a carbon price, including former republican leadership (before the party forgot literally everything about how economics works), but political leadership has been hesitant to do what’s needed because it fears the inevitable political backlash driven by well-funded propaganda entities in the oil industry.
For that reason, most carbon pricing schemes have focused on industrial processes, rather than consumer goods. This is currently happening in Canada, which recently (unwisely) retreated from its consumer carbon price but still maintains a price on the largest polluters in the oil industry.
But until today’s agreement by the IMO, there had been no global agreement of the same in any industry. There are single-country carbon prices, and international agreements between certain countries or subnational entities, often in the form of “cap-and-trade” agreements which implement penalties, and where companies that reduce emissions earn credits that they can then sell to companies that exceed limits (California has a similar program in partnership with with Quebec), but no previous global carbon price in any industry.
Carbon prices opposed by enemies of life on Earth
Unsurprisingly, entities that favor destruction of life on Earth, such as the oil industry and those representing it (Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the bought-and-paid oil stooge who is illegally squatting in the US Oval Office), opposed these measures, claiming they would be “unworkable.”
Meanwhile, island nations whose entire existence is threatened by climate change (along with the ~2 billion people who will have to relocate by the end of the century due to rising seas) correctly said that the move isn’t strong enough, and that even stronger action is needed to avoid the worse effects of climate change.
The island nations’ position is backed by science, the oil companies’ position is not.
While these new standards are historic and need to be lauded as the first agreement of their kind, there is still more work to be done and incentives that need to be offered to ensure that greener technologies are available to help fulfill the targets. Jesse Fahnestock, Director of Decarbonisation at the Global Maritime Forum, said:
While the targets are a step forward, they will need to be improved if they are to drive the rapid fuel shift that will enable the maritime sector to reach net zero by 2050. While we applaud the progress made, meeting the targets will require immediate and decisive investments in green fuel technology and infrastructure. The IMO will have opportunities to make these regulations more impactful over time, and national and regional policies also need to prioritise scalable e-fuels and the infrastructure needed for long-term decarbonisation.
One potential solution could be IMO’s “green corridors,” attempts to establish net-zero-emission shipping routes well in advance of the IMO’s 2050 net-zero target.
And, of course, this is only one industry, and one with a relatively low contribution to global emissions. While the vast majority of global goods are shipped over the ocean, it’s still responsible for only around 3% of global emissions. To see the large emissions reductions we need to avoid the worst effects of climate change, other more-polluting sectors – like automotive, agriculture (specifically animal agriculture), construction and heating – all could use their own carbon price to help add a forcing factor to drive down their emissions.
Lets hope that the IMO’s move sets that example, and we see more of these industries doing the right thing going forward (and ignoring those enemies of life on Earth listed above).
The agreement still has to go through a final step of approval on October, but this looks likely to happen.
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In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss the new Tesla Cybertruck RWD, more tariff mayhem, Lucid buying Nikola, and more.
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