Global layoff 10% Tesla bid farewell to "lying and winning"

Source: Beijing Business Daily

Tesla "moves the knife" inward. On April 15, a message appeared on the Internet that "Tesla CEO Elon Musk released an internal email to reduce the global staff by 10%". In this regard, a person close to Tesla told the Beijing Business Daily that Tesla employees have indeed received internal emails and will cut 10% of the global workforce. According to statistics, by the end of last year, Tesla had about 140000 employees worldwide. This means that this round of global layoffs will involve about 14000 people. As the top seller of electric vehicles in the world, Tesla has been rushing all the way before relying on cost control and continuously pushing up the delivery of new cars. However, in the face of fierce competition in the new energy vehicle market, Tesla has said goodbye to "lying and winning" after its recent sales slowdown and gross profit rate sounding the "alarm".

　　 Inward moving knife

For this round of layoffs, Musk said in his internal email that "it is to prepare for the next growth phase cycle".

Musk said frankly that Tesla has developed rapidly, with overlapping roles and work functions in some fields. When preparing for the next stage of Tesla's development, it is extremely important to review all aspects of the company in order to reduce costs and improve productivity. As part of this, Tesla conducted a thorough review of the organization and made a difficult decision, that is, to cut 10% of the workforce globally, which will enable Tesla to keep improving and prepare for the next growth cycle. When talking about Tesla's future, Musk said frankly that Tesla is studying some of the most revolutionary technologies in the fields of automobile, energy and artificial intelligence.

As early as February this year, Tesla announced layoffs. Tesla executives were asked to identify the "most important role" in the team and postpone the performance appraisal of some employees. On the morning of April 15, it was reported that Tesla employees said that Tesla would conduct a round of large-scale layoffs in the near future, involving 20% of employees. This is not Tesla's first layoff. It is understood that in 2017, Tesla said it would reduce the number of employees by 2%. Thereafter, Tesla also laid off employees in 2018, 2019 and 2022.

In fact, in addition to re launching global layoffs, Tesla also made adjustments to the working hours of employees in the super factory. It is reported that Tesla has informed some employees of the Austin Super Factory in Texas, USA, that it will shorten the shift time of the production line. Previously, the employees of Austin Super Factory implemented a 12 hour shift system, with working hours ranging from 6:00 to 18:00 on one shift and from 18:00 to 6:00 on the next day on the other shift. After adjustment, the working hours of one shift are from 6:00 to 17:00, and the working hours of the other shift are from 18:00 to 4:30 of the next day.

　　 Fatigue appearance

When Tesla started global layoffs, its global delivery also showed "weakness".

Data shows that in the first quarter of this year, Tesla produced 433400 vehicles and delivered 386800 vehicles, both lower than Wall Street's expectations. Among them, the total output of Model 3/Y is 412400 vehicles, and the total delivery is 369800 vehicles. In terms of global delivery, Tesla fell 8.3% year on year and 20.1% month on month in the first quarter of this year. This is also the first time in the past four years that Tesla's quarterly delivery volume has declined year-on-year.

As for the decline of delivery in the first quarter, Tesla explained that in the first quarter of this year, the Fremont factory in California, the United States, was in a new version of Model 3. At the same time, the logistics was blocked due to the Red Sea conflict, and the Berlin super factory was shut down due to fire, which affected the increase of production and sales.

Although Tesla attributed the decline in sales to external factors, it is believed that it has something to do with the slowdown in market demand and the increasingly fierce competitive environment. From the production and sales data of the first quarter, Tesla's production is significantly higher than the delivery, and the difference between the two is 46600 vehicles. Emmanuel Rosner, an analyst at Deutsche Bank on Wall Street, said in a report: "The difference between delivery and output proves that Tesla has about 46000 vehicles in stock. This means that in addition to the known production bottlenecks in Fremont and Berlin, Tesla may also have serious market demand problems."

While the global market's demand for Tesla models is slowing down, the competition is fierce National New Energy The automobile market also brings pressure to Tesla. Data shows that Tesla delivered 220900 new cars in the Chinese market in the first quarter of this year, compared with 229300 in the first quarter of last year. Zhong Shi, an auto analyst, believes that the current competitive environment in the new energy vehicle market is quite different from that of Tesla when it was first made in China. In the early days, Tesla seized the market opportunity to rapidly increase sales, but at present, its own brands continue to speed up product research and development, rapidly iterate models, and at the same time, prices continue to decline, which to a certain extent diverted the sales of Tesla's models.

Compared with the speed of self owned brand innovation, Tesla is slightly slow. At present, there are five models on sale under Tesla, namely Model 3, Model Y, Model S, Model X and Cybertruck. Among them, the Model series has maintained the lineup of four models for many years. Although the Model "SX" launched the Plaid version of the model and the Model "3Y" launched a new version of the model, the outside world believes that Tesla's push is not complete. Industry insiders believe that the attraction of Tesla models is weakening for Chinese consumers who are accustomed to intelligent assisted driving and "refrigerators, color TVs, big sofas".

In fact, Musk also said frankly that if there were no trade barriers, Chinese car companies could kill most of the world's car companies.

　　 New car rescue site

Under the pressure of sales volume, Tesla urgently needs to launch models with more cost and price advantages than the Model "3Y" to stimulate sales growth.

It is understood that Tesla's next generation model will be put into production in the second half of next year. For this model, Tesla revealed that the size of the next generation model will be smaller than the model 3 and model Y currently on sale, and the cost will be only half of the existing platform.

Musk said that Tesla is currently in the middle of two major "growth waves". The first wave started with the global expansion of the Model 3/Y platform, and the next growth wave will be initiated by the global expansion of the next-generation automobile platform. In his view, the launch of a new model will be a difficult project, but after optimization, the model may change the rules of the game of large-scale automobile production. Musk even said that he would "sleep on the production line" to welcome the arrival of new models.

Yan Jinghui, a member of the expert committee of China Automobile Circulation Association, said that lower cost models could attract more consumers through lower prices, thus helping Tesla seize more market shares. However, at present, in the Chinese automobile market, the competition in both the price and configuration of new cars is extremely fierce. If Tesla wants to increase sales again, whether the price and configuration can meet the consumption expectations becomes the key.

According to the data released by McKinsey, a research organization, last year there were more than 40 newly launched electric vehicles in the Chinese market at the price of 200000 yuan, and they generally have a high level of configuration.

In addition, Tesla is also seeking to achieve sales breakthroughs in more global markets. It is reported that Tesla is investigating potential exhibition halls in New Delhi and Mumbai, India, and plans to sell cars in India this year. Data shows that last year, electric vehicles accounted for only about 2% of India's total vehicle sales. However, the Indian government aims to increase the proportion of electric vehicles to 30% by 2030. At the same time, the Indian government has also begun to increase policy efforts to attract foreign automobile manufacturers to carry out large-scale investment and production to promote the development of the domestic electric vehicle industry. It is reported that the Indian government has announced that it will reduce import taxes for automobile manufacturers that have promised to invest more than 500 million dollars in India within three years and set up factories there.

Beijing Business Daily reporter Liu Yang Liu Xiaomeng

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