According to people familiar with the matter, Tesla has cut regarding 200 employees from its Autopilot team due to the closure of a factory in California, in the largest layoff of the electric car maker in recent times.
The fired employees, who were notified on Tuesday, are part of a San Mateo office that analyzes customer vehicle data related to self-driving assistance features, according to sources. Many of the layoffs are experts in data annotation.
Tesla has moved its headquarters from California to Texas and is building factories in Austin, Texas, and Berlin, Germany. A total of 30 people were employed in the San Mateo office where the layoffs were made, and some employees have been moved to neighboring factories.
Tesla has been hiring aggressively in recent years, with regarding 100,000 employees worldwide, but it has recently started laying off workers. CEO Elon Musk said in mid-June that he had a “super bad” feeling regarding the economy and would lay off 10% of full-time employees in the next three months, but plans to increase the number of hourly employees, and the overall number of employees within a year will not decrease but increase.
Tesla’s downsizing has focused on areas where it had previously expanded too quickly, with some known layoffs of human resources employees and software engineers, as well as layoffs of employees who have only been on the job for a few weeks.
The wave of layoffs has also affected senior roles, including the Singapore regional manager, and Tesla recently canceled three recruitment events in China scheduled for this month.
Tesla (TSLA-US) shares tumbled 5 percent on Tuesday to close at $697.99 a share, down less than 1 percent in following-hours trading. The stock has tumbled 34% this year through Tuesday’s close, far outpacing the S&P 500’s 20% drop over the same period.
Tesla’s target price has been repeatedly cut recently. According to Barron’s analysis, $700 will be the key to the bull and bear of its stock price. It is necessary to hold $700 for at least a week before it can break the downtrend.