Tesla fired its entire new ad team in recent layoffs
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 (TSLA) has introduced a new direct discount for the Model Y in China as the latest of a series of incentives to boost demand during this critical end-of-quarter push.
The automaker regularly offers discounts at the end of every quarter, but the incentives to boost demand have been the most wide-ranging ever this quarter.
Over the last month, we have been documenting the many sale incentives and discounts that Tesla has put in place to ensure it creates the demand for a record quarter.
Tesla aims to deliver a record number of more than 515,000 vehicles in Q4 in order for its sales not to be down for the whole year. That’s ~30,000 more vehicles than Tesla’s last record quarter, which was Q4 2023.
In Europe, the incentives include a year of free Supercharging and heavy discounts on inventory vehicles.
In the US, there are also good inventory discounts, 3 months of free Supercharger and Full Self-Driving subscription, FSD transfer, and more.
More recently, Tesla also slashed the lease price of the base Model Y and even offered discounted home charging under Tesla Electric for those taking delivery of new vehicles.
And everywhere, Tesla is heavily subsidizing loans with lower interest rates. That has been the main incentive in China, Tesla’s biggest market, until now.
Tesla’s New Discount in China
Today, Tesla announced that it is offering a ¥10,000, the equivalent of $1,380 USD, discount on the final payment for new Model Y vehicles:
The new discount can be combined with Tesla’s subsidized 0% interest financing, which has been Tesla’s main incentive in China all year.
Electrek’s Take
Based on insurance data, Tesla is tracking ahead of last year’s deliveries in China, but it is going to need to beat its last record by a significant margin to make sure not to be down for the whole year.
Model Y is Tesla’s most popular vehicle, but Tesla is also going against the expectation of the design refresh coming early next year, which can negatively affect demand.
This discount is likely to combat that and maintain Tesla’s current good momentum in China.
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We now have more details on the massive recall, which just keeps growing. Hyundai and now Kia are recalling more than 208,000 electric vehicles in Canada and the US to fix a problem with the loss of driving power, which can increase the risk of a crash.
For the second time this year, the automakers are recalling huge swathes of EVs and other “electrified” vehicles in North America, citing concerns about a loss of driving power, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said on Friday.
In the US, Hyundai is recalling 145,235 EVs, including the 2022 through 2024 Ioniq 5, the 2023 through 2025 Ioniq 6, GV60 and GV70, and the 2023 and 2024 G80. In Canada, Hyundai is recalling 34,529 vehicles that were produced between March and November of this year, according to Automotive News Canada.
As for Kia, the recall includes close to 63,000 Kia EV 6 vehicles from 2022 through 2024 in the US, but the company has yet to offer details on its Canada recall.
It looks like the issue stems from “the integrated charging control units in these vehicles, which may become damaged and fail to charge the 12-volt battery. This malfunction could lead to a complete loss of drive power, posing safety risks for drivers,” the NHTSA stated.
Back in March, Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis issued a similar recall for 147,110 electric vehicles – that recall centered, again, around damaged integrated charging control units failing to charge the battery.
The South Korea automaker has said that all owners of affected vehicles will be notified by letter mail on the next steps to take. This will involve bringing your vehicle to one of the company’s dealers to inspect and replace the charging unit and its fuse if necessary, along with performing a software update for the charging units.
Importantly, no crashes, injuries, fatalities, or fires due to this issue have been reported in the US or Canada, Hyundai reported.
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A group of Tesla vehicles spotted under covers at the automaker’s test track at the Fremont factory is raising some questions.
Tesla has a very small test track on the ground of its first factory, Tesla Fremont, in California.
Now and again, people fly drones over the factory and catch glimpses of new cars being tested. Youtuber ‘Met God in Wilderness’ is one of those drone pilots who regularly fly over the factory and while he didn’t catch vehicle being tested, he did catch some curious vehicles under covers next to the track:
The vehicles are all covered, and therefore, it’s hard to tell exactly what they are, but the different shapes are intriguing and raise some questions.
It looks like three, maybe four, different kinds of vehicles:
We know that Tesla is working on three new specific vehicles: a Model Y design refresh, and two new cheaper models based on Model 3 and Model Y.
All three vehicles are expected to be unveiled early next year.
Electrek’s Take
At the risk of stating the obvious, getting much information from vehicles hidden under cover can be hard. It’s even possible that some of those have shape camouflage, which is sometimes used by automakers – although I don’t remember Tesla ever using that.
So here are my best guesses. Take them for what they are: guesses.
The most interesting ones to me are the first two on the left in the picture above. The last vehicle on the left looks like it could be a smaller Model 3.:
The next one could be its Model Y counterpart:
I also wouldn’t be surprised if a Model Y Juniper, the upcoming refresh, is under one of those covers, but we already had good looks at this one.
What about you? What do you think about these Tesla vehicles? Let us know in the comment section below.
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