Tesla layoffs have reportedly also hit its international offices

Tesla layoffs reportedly impacted workers in China in addition to the US. JOHN THYS / Getty

• Elon Musk announced a 10% Tesla workforce reduction in an email to staff on Sunday night.
• The carmaker denied reports they’d cut roughly 25% of their Berlin workers.
• But some members of its China sales team have been made redundant, Reuters reported.

Tesla’s layoffs will also reportedly impact its international workers.

On Sunday night, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the company planned to cut “more than 10%” of its workforce, according to an internal memo viewed by Business Insider. Workers who’d been laid off in the US were notified that same night via their personal emails that they were terminated, effective immediately, and had been locked out of Tesla’s internal systems, several laid-off workers told BI.

And the cuts reportedly don’t just apply to US staff. Some members of China’s sales team have also been laid off as part of the company’s recent actions, two sources told Reuters. It’s unclear how many people are affected.

But its German division has denied reports from local outlets that the layoffs impacted about a quarter of the company’s 12,000 workers at its factory in Berlin, according to Reuters.

Tesla has major manufacturing footprints in both China and Germany. Ahead of the layoffs, the carmaker employed over 140,000 people globally, including about 20,000 in China. The Chinese EV market is the largest in the world and Musk has said in the past that Tesla faces competition from Chinese EV companies.

On Monday, some US Tesla employees were told during an all-hands meeting there would be further cuts outside North America, two sources told BI. Three other workers said they’d been told by managers that workers outside the region would be notified of layoffs in the days following the US notices of termination that were sent out on Sunday night.

A spokesperson for Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Musk said in the companywide email that there had been a “duplication of roles and job functions in certain areas” due to the company’s rapid growth, according to a memo viewed by BI.

Over the weekend, US Tesla workers had speculated that layoffs were on the horizon, as rumors that some managers had been told to provide upper management with a list of names spread throughout the company.

Separately, Tesla started instructing managers in February to identify which roles at the company were business-critical and had temporarily delayed performance reviews.

Tesla’s recent round of cuts is the company’s first large-scale layoffs since it eliminated a few dozen workers at its plant in Buffalo, New York, in February 2023 and 10% of its salaried workforce in 2022.

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