According to reports from America, Tesla Motors is laying off 100 staff, more than half of its workforce, as a result of the global financial crisis.
The fledgling electric car company’s CEO Ze’ev Drori is also said to be leaving.
Tesla – which has just launched its incredible Elise-based all-electric Roadster - had recently announced plans for a £143 million factory in San Jose.
The modern Silicon Valley firm is backed by substantial investors, including Elon Musk, who founded PayPal. In recent months, it’s been able to cherry-pick leading motor industry figures from the likes of Ford, Chrysler and Mazda.
But the lack of available credit, and Tesla’s expensive product proposition, could have stinted its growth. As yet there’s no official word from Tesla on the redundancies, we’ll bring you more news as we get it.
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Some clowns, only a few weeks
Some clowns, only a few weeks back, were guffing about Tesla being the rebirth of the US auto industry, a paradigm shift, a milestone equivalent to
Microsoft's founding HP0-M50 and kickstarting of the PC computer industry or Google and Internet 2.0. All utter guff. It was just another bling, flotsam and HP2-H27 jetsam bauble for the look-at-me American HP2-K32 craperati to feed their egos and earth-saving cred.
Re: Tesla in trouble?
Tesla's website gives the well to wheel CO2 figures for the Tesla when supplied by the power mix that runs to US grid, it works out as 150mpg equivilent. The Volt's CO2 figures will vary greatly depending on how you drive it, on a motorway it will probably be similar to small engined petrol car if it's mostly driven by a commuter than the figures will be the same as the Tesla.
The big reason why Tesla is shedding jobs is that now all the big manufacturers are building their own electric cars Tesla don't really have a long term future as a car maker. The people they brought in to design the roadster are now no longer needed as they probably won't make another model.
The people who set Tesla up must have realised that there was a fair chance that other manufacturers would jump on the band wagon once they started it so I suspect that they will have costed the Roadster as a stand alone project with an exit strategy of selling their IP to a major manufacture who hasn't got an internal electric car R&D program.
Re: Tesla in trouble?
If they get the administrators in and a couple of women arrive representing them, will they be known as the Tesla Girls?
I'll get my coat.................