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posted by martyb on Sunday October 15 2017, @02:40AM   Printer-friendly
from the where-there's-firing-there's-smoke? dept.

Tesla has fired several hundred of its employees following performance evaluations. Tesla recently conducted the biggest expansion of its workforce in the company's history, and is struggling to increase production of its Model 3 sedan:

Tesla Inc. has fired an undetermined number of employees following a series of performance evaluations after the company significantly boosted its workforce with the purchase of solar panel maker SolarCity Corp.

The departures are part of an annual review, the Palo Alto, California-based company said in an email, without providing a number of people affected. The maker of the Model S this week dismissed between 400 and 700 employees, including engineers, managers and factory workers, the San Jose Mercury News reported on Oct. 13, citing unidentified current and former workers.

"As with any company, especially one of over 33,000 employees, performance reviews also occasionally result in employee departures," the company said in the statement. "Tesla is continuing to grow and hire new employees around the world."

The company has more than 2,000 job openings on its careers website.

The dismissals come after Tesla said it built just 260 Model 3 sedans during the third quarter, less than a fifth of its 1,500-unit forecast. The company has offered scant detail about the problems it's having producing the car. The vehicle's entry price starts at $35,000, roughly half the cost of Tesla's least-expensive Model S sedan.

Also at NYT, Reuters, and The Mercury News.


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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by n1 on Sunday October 15 2017, @03:13AM (7 children)

    by n1 (993) on Sunday October 15 2017, @03:13AM (#582491) Journal

    It really can't be blamed on the employees for skipping beta testing, management departing for greener pastures and starting production before the factory was ready, to get the product out the door as promised. Tesla has never made a deadline and i'm pretty sure it's not the line worker or sales fault.

    They have a visionary CEO that just picks numbers out the air, because you have to aim high, and it's all supposed to be done by robots anyway, built by other robots. According to reports much of the firings were in sales, which is kind of weird since they're apparently at full capacity on Model S and X production lines... Hard to sell a product that's already sold out... and they're supposedly 'anti-selling' the model3 and have 'no marketing'.

    One year ago: "Tesla Model 3 Production Target Is Up To 200,000 In Second Half Of 2017" .... which somehow turned into 1500 in Q3, which actually became 260... and as Model3OwnersClub said.. "the software is not finished yet" when people saw the video of the touch screen UI...

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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15 2017, @03:32AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15 2017, @03:32AM (#582502)

    > since they're apparently at full capacity on Model S and X production lines...

    Not according to this post from July 2017 -- https://seekingalpha.com/article/4086711-teslas-new-vehicle-inventory-skyrockets [seekingalpha.com]

    The fact is, contrary to what Tesla would like us to believe and until now has failed to disclose, this company has a huge and growing number of unsold new vehicles. Tesla has not been "production constrained" for months.

    The story of battery shortfalls causing productions delays (a headline in Tesla's Q2 statement first issued on July 3rd) made little sense to me. I have been putting the puzzle pieces together for a while now. I disclosed some of the pieces in my recently published articles about growing inventories of unsold new cars clogging delivery center parking lots and new cars once again being discounted. You can read those inventory-related stories here and here if you missed them earlier.
    ...

    Goes on with more numbers and details -- claims over 8000 vehicles unsold at the end of 2nd quarter 2017.

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by n1 on Sunday October 15 2017, @03:44AM

      by n1 (993) on Sunday October 15 2017, @03:44AM (#582508) Journal

      There are all sorts of skeletons in the Tesla closet, the most successful element of the business is in financial engineering. I used 'apparently' on full capacity because that's what the company claims as why they have a 100,000 target on S & X combined.

      Tesla is a 'tech company' by reports and is valued as such... But is has the operational expenditure of a tech, manufacturing, retail and construction company.

      They have 'amazing' gross margins on their cars, but do not include R&D of those cars, the sales and admin in selling them, despite owning their own 'service centers and galleries' as being how they're 'disrupting' the market, but do not include any of it in how they calculate their margins. Their charging network is apparently classified as marketing, so the cost of providing free charging facilities to the owners of the previous models doesn't count either.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by khallow on Sunday October 15 2017, @03:44AM (2 children)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday October 15 2017, @03:44AM (#582509) Journal
      Ugh, if true, that's stuffing the channel [wikipedia.org], like Chrysler and American Motors used to do. It's a really bad sign.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15 2017, @04:13AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15 2017, @04:13AM (#582518)

        Not quite the same as traditional auto industry stuffing, since Tesla owns all the Tesla Sales Centers.

        Channel stuffing includes forcing independent dealers to stock (and/or buy) extra cars, and this in turn probably involves the dealer's line of credit with their friendly bankers.

        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 15 2017, @05:42AM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday October 15 2017, @05:42AM (#582551) Journal
          I understand that both the old companies had parking lots full of back log that took a year or more to pass on to dealers. So it's not that different from someone who doesn't have dealers in the first place.
  • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15 2017, @04:02AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15 2017, @04:02AM (#582516)

    and they're supposedly 'anti-selling' the model3 and have 'no marketing'.

    I saw that movie. "Producers Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom make money by producing a sure-fire flop. [imdb.com]"

  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday October 15 2017, @01:10PM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Sunday October 15 2017, @01:10PM (#582619)

    Software is never finished (thus the Soft in the name.) What the Model 3 owners have is unacceptable software, not ready for release.

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]