Layoffs are drastic? Tesla China recently began recalling previously laid off employees.
According to Jiemian News, Times Finance and other media reports, the reporter learned from Tesla employees that a small number of Tesla China departments are rehiring some of the laid off employees, and most of them are concentrated in the sales and service fields.
Cut hard? Tesla recalls some of its laid off employees
HR has started to help sell cars
According to Jiemian News, on June 27, Tesla China launched the process of recalling previously laid off employees in the last two days, and the recall scale is expected to exceed 100 people. At present, the employees who are scheduled to be recalled originally belong to the charging, sales, after-sales and delivery departments, and if they agree to be recalled, the returning employees need to refund the "3" of the "N+3" redundancy compensation part, and the seniority will be recalculated.
More than two months ago, Musk announced that Tesla would launch a large-scale layoff worldwide, accounting for more than 10%, and the sales and service department in China was one of the "hardest hit areas". Tesla's latest internal documents show that the company currently has about 121,000 employees, which is a cut of more than 14% from the company's more than 140,000 employees at the end of last year, a decrease of nearly 20,000.
At the earnings conference in the first quarter of this year, Musk said that Tesla's labor surplus rate (inefficiency level) may have reached 25% to 30% after a "long boom" since 2019. He also said that while Tesla has been reshuffling its personnel in recent years, it will need to undergo a more thorough restructuring to move to the next phase of growth.
According to reports, Tesla's charging, sales and marketing teams in China have even laid off 40%-50% of their employees. For the laid-off employees, Tesla's compensation standard is "N+3", and it will go through the formalities and leave the office on the day when the terms of compensation for the layoffs are negotiated. At the end of May, Tesla China successively issued compensation for layoffs.
Two Tesla employees at the Beijing office said the layoffs had cut the number of employees in the Beijing office by nearly half, and the Shanghai office by nearly a third. A former employee of Tesla's sales system said that some supermarket stores with large layoffs only retain teams of 5 to 6 people, which is not conducive to the normal operation of stores. Normally, the number of employees in Tesla supermarkets should be 8 to 9. According to Time Weekly, a person close to Tesla confirmed to reporters that the main reason for the rehiring of laid-off employees was the lack of staff in the store.
Even Tesla China's HR has started to help sell cars. A woman who has submitted a resume to Tesla told the "Daily Economic News" reporter that she recently received a call from Tesla's HR, who said that although she had no recruitment plan for Tesla China for the position she had previously submitted, she had a lot of discounts for car purchases recently, and she could consider buying Tesla cars and invited her to test drive.
Image source: Courtesy of the interviewee
However, some of the laid-off Tesla employees in China are not very interested in this rehiring. On social platforms, some of Tesla's Chinese sales, which were affected by the layoffs, have entered brands such as NIO and Ledao to start new jobs.
This isn't the first time Tesla has rehired and laid off employees. Shortly after Tesla CEO Elon Musk laid off nearly 500 employees on the Supercharger team in May, Tesla rehired them, including Max Dezegel, director of North American charging. According to overseas media reports, Tesla North America has started hiring again and has released hundreds of new positions, involving artificial intelligence and robotics, manufacturing, supply chain, operations and other departments. At present, Tesla has opened recruitment for sales, after-sales and delivery in China.
At the same time as the layoffs, Musk also said that he would reward employees for outstanding performance. On June 17, Musk said in an email to all employees that Tesla will offer stock options to high-performing employees in the coming weeks to reward those who have made outstanding contributions to the company. Previously, Musk's own $56 billion (about 406.2 billion yuan) salary plan had been approved.
People familiar with the matter told the first financial reporter that although Tesla had previously suspended performance-based equity awards, it has recently restarted the option award plan.
Tesla's market value evaporated by more than one trillion during the year
Musk made a number of promises
According to data released by Tesla, the company's car deliveries in the first quarter of this year fell by 8.5% year-on-year. Tesla expects that the sales growth rate in 2024 may be significantly lower than the growth rate in 2023. Tesla's financial report shows that in the first quarter of this year, the company's revenue fell by 9%, the largest decline in 12 years.
However, stimulated by price cuts, Tesla's sales in the Chinese market picked up in May, with data from the Passenger Association showing that Tesla's domestic sales in May exceeded 55,000 units, an increase of 77% month-on-month and 30% year-on-year. Tesla's wholesale sales of new energy passenger vehicles in China reached 72,573 units (including exports) in May.
As of the close of trading on June 27, Tesla's stock price closed at $197.42, with a total market capitalization of $629.6 billion. Since the beginning of this year, Tesla's stock price has fallen by more than 20%, and its market value has evaporated by more than 160 billion US dollars (about 1.16 trillion yuan).
Dan Ives, an analyst at brokerage Wadebush, believes that Tesla is an AI company that is currently seriously undervalued.
Recently, Musk promised investors that the company will soon release a new "master plan" Tesla Master Plan 4. Musk said the plan would be "epic." Tesla is actively buying AI chips to train its self-driving large models. Earlier this month, Musk said that Tesla could spend $3 billion to $4 billion on Nvidia chip hardware this year.
Image source: Visual China
At a recent shareholder meeting, Musk also said that he would start "limited production" of the Optimus (Optimus Prime) humanoid robot in 2025 and test the humanoid robot in Tesla's factory next year. He said that humanoid robots will become the main force of industry, and the number will surpass that of humans, and it is expected to reach 10 billion to 20 billion units.
In addition, Tesla is also expected to unveil the design of its "dedicated robotaxi" on August 8. Musk also pledged to build a $500 million supercomputer system Dojo for Tesla, which will help Tesla develop computer vision technology for robots and self-driving cars, as well as large models.
During last quarter's earnings conference, Musk said that Tesla plans to start producing new models by 2025, including cheaper electric vehicles.
Editor-in-charge: Liu Anqi | Review: Li Zhen | Supervisor: Wan Junwei
(Source: National Business Daily)