Elon Musk Announces Thousands Of Layoffs At Tesla

FREMONT, CA — Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk announced Tuesday that the company will lay off nine percent of its work force in an effort to "reduce costs and become profitable." That equates to about 3,000 people, according to estimates. All of the cuts will be in salaried personnel, while associates involved in the production of the Tesla 3 will not be impacted. In fact, Musk made a point of saying that the company will continue to hire production workers to further ramp-up output of Model 3 electric cars.

Musk released the memo that he wrote to employees on social media (see below), saying that it had already been leaked.

The company founder reiterated that the goal of Tesla is nothing short of changing the world, telling employees, "What drives us is our mission to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable, clean energy, but we will never achieve that mission unless we eventually demonstrate that we can be sustainably profitable."

Laid off workers will be given a salary and stock vesting package based on years of service.

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To further trim costs, the solar division of Tesla will not renew an agreement it has with Home Depot, opting instead to sell products online and in company branded stores.

Musk concluded his letter to employees by saying, "Tesla has already played a major role in moving the auto industry towards sustainable electric transport and moving the energy industry towards sustainable power generation and storage. We must continue to drive that forward for the good of the world."

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Tesla is headquartered in Palo Alto, with vehicle assembly and multiple offices in Fremont.

--Photo by Maggie Avants, Patch