A new report from Electrek, an American EV new site, says that Elon Musk’s Tesla is preparing for the possibility of a worsening economy.
According to the blog’s source, the automaker will lay off more people in the first quarter of 2023 and pause hiring for now.
This comes after the automaker just started hiring again in the second half of 2022, after a hiring freeze and the first round of layoffs in June.
Not just that, but a number of Tesla investors have expressed concerns over CEO Elon Musk’s time commitment to Twitter.
The electric vehicle manufacturer is under added stress because of the sharp decline in its stock price that started in late September/early October and accelerated at the end of the month when Elon Musk finalised his acquisition of Twitter in October for a reported $44 billion.
According to Reuters, analysts have lowered their price targets for Tesla’s stock because they are worried that weak demand from China will affect the company’s deliveries in 2023.
Of course, the state of the macroeconomy doesn’t appear to be improving any time soon, so this could be a good cause for Tesla to take steps to slow or reduce expenditure on employees.
Musk has lately stated that the problem is not a unique challenge facing Tesla, but rather a problem with the stock market as a whole, caused by rising bank account interest rates and overall market volatility.
Nonetheless, skeptics continue to blame Musk’s lack of focus for the company’s recent bad performance with investors.
Of course, all indications points to Elon Musk’s new distraction – Twitter – even though the CEO has failed to admit it. Anyway, Musk had recently started looking for a new CEO for the microblogging platform.
And if he eventually finds “someone foolish enough to take on the job,” will the billionaire truly stepaway and allow this ‘person’ to really takeover, considering a follow-up clause he made that, “After that I’ll run the software & servers teams” at Twitter Inc.?
