Tesla to lay off nearly 700 in Nevada as car sales slump

Tesla is laying off just under 700 employees at its manufacturing facility in Sparks, a suburb of Reno.

The Austin, Texas-based electric vehicle company filed the layoff notice impacting 693 employees on April 19, but the document was made public from the state of Nevada this week. The layoffs were expected to happen by June 14, according to the notice.

In a memo to employees earlier this month, Tesla CEO Elon Musk shared plans to lay off 10 percent of the company’s workforce after dismal first-quarter sales. Tesla saw a 9 percent drop in car sales from the first quarter of 2023 to the first quarter of 2024.

The layoffs were expected to impact 14,000 of the 140,473 workers employed by the company. According to multiple reports this week, 3,300 workers will be laid off in California and 2,700 from Tesla’s Austin factory will lose their jobs.

In the memo, Musk said for the next stage of Tesla’s growth “it is extremely important to look at every aspect of the company for cost reductions and increasing productivity,” the New York Times and CNBC reported.

Tesla didn’t immediately respond to questions on the layoffs.

Tesla’s Gigafactory Nevada, a lithium-ion battery and electric vehicle component factory, has about 12,000 employees. The factory has been open since summer 2016. The company became a large player in Northern Nevada’s economy as it promised to invest $3.6 billion to expand its operations in the region after it received a tax abatement of $330 million in 2023.

It has been a tough stretch for Tesla recently, as the company issued a recall for 3,878 of its 2024 Cybertrucks after it was discovered the accelerator pedal can get stuck, which can cause the vehicle to accelerate unintentionally. Tesla also this month cut $2,000 from the prices of three of its car models, the Model Y, X and S.

Contact Sean Hemmersmeier at shemmersmeier@reviewjournal.com. Follow @seanhemmers34 on X. The Associated Press contributed to this report.