Tesla CEO Elon Musk says the company is losing “billions of dollars” at its new plants in Berlin, Germany, and Austin, Texas, as it tries to ramp up production.
Reason for Elon Musk's layoffs
“Both Berlin and Austin factories are gigantic money furnaces right now,” the chief executive officer said in a video interview with Tesla Owners of Silicon Valley posted online Wednesday.
The comments, part of a broader discussion filmed May 31, offer new insight into Tesla’s operations in the days leading up to Musk’s decision to cut costs by laying off employees. The reductions will affect about 10% of Tesla’s salaried workers over the next three months, or about 3.5% of its global workforce, Musk told Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait at the Qatar Economic Forum on Tuesday.
Musk also said in the May 31 interview that Tesla has struggled to quickly increase production in Austin of Model Y SUVs that use the company’s new 4680 cells and structurally integrated battery pack. To keep up with high demand for its cars, the company said in an April letter to shareholders that it would also make Model Y SUVs with the older 2170 cells in Austin — but the tooling required for that got stuck in China, Musk said.
