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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In a move that helps the brand duck protectionist anti-Chinese tariffs, Volvo Cars has switched production of its award-winning EX30 models destined for US roads from its Zhangjiakou plant in China to the Ghent facility in Belgium.
Volvo EX30 production began in the company’s Ghent factory back in April, but those first cars were earmarked for the Swedish domestic and European export markets, but that move wasn’t primarily motivated by avoiding tariffs. As Electrive reports, the company seemed happy enough to continue importing its small electric crossover from China and accepting the new 28.8% tariffs (up from 10%), but the wait times to get the vehicles shipped in from China was imply too long.
In 2024, Swedish and German buyers had to wait up to eight months for their EX30 in some cases, according to Volvo Cars’ European boss, Arek Nowinski, per Automotive News. Once production in Ghent is fully up to speed, however, wait times should be cut to about 90 days. Those wait times, and the price hike associated with the tariffs, have hurt sales of the originally Chinese-made Volvo EV. In 2024, for example, the EX30 ranked third in European EV sales, but slipped out of the top 10 first half of 2025.
“The car is now being built in Europe, which means faster delivery times,” Volvo Cars CEO Hakan Samuelsson to Automotive News. “We should return to the sales and market share figures for the EX30 that we had before the introduction of tariffs.”
Coming to Staying in America
The EX30’s switch to Ghent is good news for American fans of the compact, lickety-quick Volvo EV. Now that it’s no longer exclusively made in China, Volvo has decided to give it a stay of execution as it revamps its US product lineup to better align with market trends (read: SUVs) and the changing political landscape (read: tariffs and inflation).
The reason? The Made in China version of the EX30 would virtually unsellable in the US due to the implementation of 147% tariffs on vehicles imported from China. Vehicles imported from Europe, meanwhile, carry just 15% tariffs, keeping the EX30 in a competitive price bracket.
Expect to see both Ghent and South Carolina play an increasingly large role in Volvo’s US product mix – at least for the next three-odd years.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Volvo Cars, Automotive News, via Electrive.
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New filings have revealed that BYD is about to release a ridiculous 3,000 hp electric supercar: the Yangwang U9 Track Edition.
BYD already shocked the world when it launched the Yangwang U9, its first all-electric supercar.
It featured four advanced electric motors with a combined power of nearly 1,300 horsepower. The U9 can accelerate from 0 to 62 mph (0 to 100 km/h) in just 2.36 seconds.
With a motor at each wheel and a highly advanced electric-air suspension, the U9 can turn on itself and even jump over potholes.
But that was only the beginning.
Based on a new filing with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), BYD is preparing to launch a new ‘Track Edition’ of the Yangwang U9:
When an automaker releases a “track” version of a car, it typically primarily features body changes for better aerodynamic performance, adding downforce, and it will also often feature bigger brakes.
The Yangwang U9 ‘Track Edition’ appears to feature all that… and much more.
The filing reveals that BYD updated the motors at each wheel to a new 555 kW motor. That’s a higher-performing motor than in most performance electric vehicles. The U9 Track Edition has four of them for a total of 2,220 kW (3,019 hp).
I would have thought that this was a typo if it wasn’t for the insane electric vehicles coming out of China these days.
Here are a few pictures from the MIIT filing:
There are a lot of performance specs that are not included in the MIIT filing. Therefore, it will be interesting to see when the vehicle is fully unveiled and BYD reveals what kind of performance it can achieve with 3,000 hp packed in 4 electric motors.
Here are a few other features mentioned in the filing:
Standard features:
- 20-inch wheels with 325/35 R20 tyres
- Carbon-fibre roof
- Large fixed carbon-fibre rear wing
- Rear diffuser with adjustable blades for aerodynamic optimisation
Optional aerodynamic parts:
- Standard or enhanced carbon-fibre front splitter
- Electric rear wing
Electrek’s Take
How are they going to keep that thing from flying away? Seriously.
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