[vannevar]

These are not the kind of cuts you make because you have a bad feeling. These are the kinds of cuts you make because you're seeing orders fall off a cliff. I suspect that in particular Tesla is seeing erosion in their Cybertruck pre-orders given that Ford and Rivian have beaten them to market and both those products are drawing rave reviews.

[saurik]

FWIW, I get the impression that their primary problem right now is production capacity / supply, not pre-orders / demand: they are pretty constantly increasing the price, are moving the delivery date of existing orders forward, have occasionally hinted they might should simply stop taking orders at all as they are so far behind, and supposedly have tons of cars sitting around at Tesla locations waiting for one or two more parts to come in before they can be handed to customers.

[DoesntMatter22]

That doesn't even make any sense. Tesla doesn't even sell any CyberTrucks right now, so even if they lost all their pre orders it wouldn't affect revenue now. Ford and Rivian aren't even making vehicles in any sort of volume to be even a minor rival.

And why do you think that orders are falling off of a cliff exactly?

Tesla has grown incredibly fast, they have 100k employees, they have a terrific balance sheet and are at no risk of bankruptcy.

For the last 10 years people seem to always lay out this awful scenario for Tesla, meanwhile they are growing in sales incredibly quickly, literally the quickest ever.

[vannevar]

Tesla has grown incredibly fast, they have 100k employees, they have a terrific balance sheet and are at no risk of bankruptcy.

Tesla has grown incredibly quick, all while essentially having the electric car market to themselves. That is no longer true---their market share will inevitably shrink, because it has nowhere to go but down. If the overall market growth slows---say, because of inflation and a recession---then this could be a problem for a company that has been staffing for breakneck growth and now sees that growth flattening. I'm not saying Tesla is going bankrupt, but I do believe that having two major competitors beat it to market in a strategic segment like trucks is a problem for Tesla, they are seeing that problem play out in projected sales, and they are trimming the payroll to rightsize for more challenging conditions.

[parkingrift]

There is a 6-9 month waiting period to receive a Model Y. More likely is that Musk is desperately focusing on factory output because demand is overwhelming supply.

[panick21_]

> because you're seeing orders fall off a cliff

Any evidence or are you just making up things? Because that is literally the opposite of pretty much everything we know about Tesla orders.

> Cybertruck pre-orders given that Ford and Rivian have beaten them to market and both those products are drawing rave reviews.

That makes no sense. Cybertruck pre-orders going away (if that is case, and I question that) would not impact its current financials.

[vannevar]

I am absolutely speculating. But companies don't just act on current financials, they act on future projections. If they see lean times ahead, they may very well cut current expenses in order to conserve cash they believe they will need in the months ahead. I don't think the current cuts are routine, or because Musk as a "bad feeling", I think they're seeing something concrete that is adversely affecting future revenue projections. A downturn in the auto market generally, and a downturn in Cybertruck demand particularly, as reflected in advance orders would certainly fit the bill.

[MomoXenosaga]

This is Musk. It totally could be he's making these cuts because he has a bad feeling. This isn't Volkswagen were everything is decided by committee.

[vagrantJin]

I don't think you fully appreciate how massive volkswagen is, as an organization.

There is literally no place for whims and feelings at a company that big.

[Melting_Harps]

> I don't think you fully appreciate how massive volkswagen is, as an organization. There is literally no place for whims and feelings at a company that big.

I do, I worked for VAG during Dieselgate and got a first hand look at the sheer monstrosity of a Megacorp that it is when dealing with the processes, and actually it has a long history of doing just that. In fact the way they got the engineers on board for the cheat device wasn't through a committee or board, it was upper management intimidating engineers to comply by way of threatening their continued employment there.

Furthermore, they could have gotten away with it after the first alarms were sounding off that they were being investigated, but they decided to keep doing it anyway.

It's really eye opening after having gone through the chaos of it all it first hand working within the TDi buy back program and dealing with Bosch and VW corporate in the early phases of the program, while doing a customer facing role and then reading Jack Ewig's book [0] now.

As for Tesla lay offs, they do this when they expand their lineup, it's like a calibration thing at this point.

Right after Tesla model 3 roll out which failed to meet its targets in '17 [1] which incidentally was days after my first round of interviews at Fremont they started to lay people off. These layoffs extended to 2018 ultimately led to shedding off 9% of total workforce by 2018 [2] when M3 ramp up was the only thing that could stop the never ending hemorrhaging that was likely to bankrupt Tesla if they didn't. I know this because that was the time that they asked me if I was still interested in the role and if I'd want to re-apply and take another round of interviews. I declined and told them I'd made efforts since then to make my way to SpaceX instead, the recruiter understood and kindly wished me well.

0: https://www.amazon.com/Faster-Higher-Farther-Volkswagen-Scan...

1: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/17/tesla-firings-former-and-cur...

2: https://text.npr.org/619426602

[thfuran]

>There is literally no place for whims and feelings at a company that big

Tesla surely meets that threshold as well.