- Elon Musk announced the firing of two top executives on Monday night
- Tesla boss revealed he will get ‘tough’ on layoffs amid falling sales
- On Sunday he made a surprise visit to China promising driverless cars.
Elon Musk has fired two top Tesla executives and announced plans to go “absolutely hard” with layoffs, frustrated by falling sales and the pace of job cuts so far, according to a new report.
The Tesla boss, who sat down with Chinese Premier Li Qiang on Sunday promising an imminent launch of self-driving cars in the country, sent a brutal email to senior managers on Monday night. Information reported.
Rebecca Tinucci, senior director of charging infrastructure at the electric vehicle maker, and Daniel Ho, head of the new vehicle program, will depart Tuesday morning, according to the report.
Musk also plans to lay off everyone who works for Tinucci and Ho, including the approximately 500 employees who work in the Supercharger group.
‘We hope these actions make it clear that we must be absolutely tough on staff and cost reduction. “While some executive staff are taking this seriously, most still are not,” Musk said.
Elon Musk announced plans to go “absolutely hard” with layoffs, frustrated by falling sales and the pace of job cuts so far.
Elon Musk fired two top Tesla executives, Daniel Ho (left) and Rebecca Tinucci (right), and laid off Tinucci’s 500-person team.
Ho joined Tesla in 2013 and was a program manager in the development of the Model S, 3 and Y before being put in charge of all new vehicles.
Tinucci joined in 2018 as senior product manager and has been in charge of the Superfreight and Destination Freight businesses since 2022.
Tesla’s public policy team, which was led by former executive Rohan Patel, will also be disbanded.
Patel and battery development chief Drew Baglino announced their departures earlier this month, when Tesla also ordered the layoff of more than 10 percent of its workforce.
Tesla has already laid off at least 14,000 of its global workforce, including those at its Texas and Buffalo factories, under pressure from falling sales and an intensifying price war between electric vehicle makers.
Musk’s visit to China came just a week after he canceled a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, citing “very heavy obligations with Tesla.”
The company has lost almost a third of its value since the beginning of the year and investors are tired of repeated delays in the launch of cars with self-driving software (FSD).
But Li praised Tesla as a successful example of US-China economic cooperation, as analysts hailed “an important moment for Tesla.”
“While Tesla’s long-term valuation story depends on FSDs and autonomous vehicles, a key missing piece of that puzzle is Tesla making FSDs available in China, which now appears to be just around the corner.” around the corner,” said equity firm Wedbush.
Musk met with Chinese Prime Minister Li Qiang on Sunday to promise an imminent launch of driverless cars in the country.
Musk opened his first Chinese gigafactory in Shanghai six years ago and it is now Tesla’s largest in the world.
Earlier this month, Musk tweeted that the launch of his FSD in China would come “very soon,” and Li seemed relaxed about using his country’s busy streets as a testbed for the pioneering technology.
But Musk was also interested in getting his permission to take home data collected in China to train algorithms for Tesla’s self-driving technologies in the United States, sources told Reuters.
Since 2021, Tesla has stored all data collected by its Chinese fleet in Shanghai as required by Chinese regulators and has not transferred any to the United States.
“It is an honor to meet with Premier Li Qiang. We have known each other for many years, since the early days of Shanghai,” Musk posted on his X social media platform, while appearing in a photo with the prime minister.
