Tesla’s Autopilot driver assistance technology may have just hit a major speed bump.
This week, the company laid off 200 hourly
employees working on its Autopilot advanced driver assistance feature, shutting
its entire San Mateo, California office in the process. News of the firings,
first reported by Bloomberg Tuesday and confirmed by TechCrunch, comes amid a
deeper belt-tightening at Tesla and during a period of increased scrutiny of
Autopilot by regulators and lawmakers.
The
layoffs, which were first reported by Bloomberg, are the latest in a string of
job cuts taking place in the company after Musk told Tesla executives the
company needed to stop hiring and reduce headcount by 10 percent.
In early June, Tesla CEO Elon Musk reportedly
told executives that Tesla needed to cut 10% of its staff, based on a "super
bad feeling" about the economy. Now, as Tesla pares back its workforce,
new reports are highlighting where some of those cuts are taking place.
At
the end of last year, Tesla had almost 100,000 employees, according to Reuters,
but it is unclear how many of those employees are salaried and how many are
hourly workers.
Most
of the Autopilot employees laid off Wednesday were hourly workers, which came as
a surprise to many since last week Musk had outlined a plan to boost hourly
jobs, Bloomberg reported.
Employees
at the San Mateo office were in charge of evaluating customer vehicle data on
Autopilot driver-assistance features, according to Techcrunch.
The layoffs in the Autopilot team also come
at an odd time for Tesla, which is facing more and more scrutiny from
regulators over auto accidents that occurred when Tesla drivers had Autopilot engaged.
Tesla
has been making cuts after Musk said the company’s new factories in Germany and
Texas were “money furnaces” as the country continues to struggle with
pandemic-related supply chain issues, according to Yahoo, and stating he
believes the country is in a recession.
According
to TechCrunch, Tesla's San Mateo office has dwindled by 195 people from an
original headcount of 276, and the office itself is now closed. Yet more people
could be laid off following Musk's comments that the US economy is on a
downward trajectory and that Tesla is overstaffed. Initially, salaried workers
were said to be the ones that would be affected by staff downsizing, but the loss
of the San Mateo hourly workers shows that nobody's job is safe.
It's
always grim pondering the loss of income for an individual or family, but with
some suggesting that Tesla could face bankruptcy, it's better to consider the
well-being of the whole. Hopefully, Tesla can return to growth soon. If only
that damn Cybertruck were ready.
Electric
vehicle (EV) blog electrek also reports that LinkedIn is flooded with “posts
from now former Tesla employees working at its San Mateo office after the
automaker let them know yesterday that it would be shutting down the office and
letting go of the employees there.”
In a LinkedIn post, Iain
Abshier had said that he had "a gut punch" that he would be included
in the Tesla layoffs after just two weeks of work.
Another fired Tesla employee Robert Belovodskij wrote that he was notified that the offer he signed to come back to Tesla full-time has been "rescinded due to the current hiring freeze and 10 per cent workforce reduction"
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