Job cuts as Tesla stalls in mass market bid
Difficult year ahead as cheaper model eludes California carmaker
Elon Musk is cutting Tesla's workforce by 7% - or more than 3,000 jobs - warning that the "road ahead is very difficult" in making electric cars more affordable for the mass market. Tesla shares fell as much as 7.7% shortly after the start of regular trading. Musk wrote in a blog post that the Palo Alto, California-based company managed to eke out a profit in the final three months of 2018, though narrower than the hard-won third-quarter earnings it reported in October. Tesla is under pressure to limit spending as it emerges from what Musk called the "most challenging" year in its history. Though it succeeded in scaling up output of its Model 3, the company missed analysts' production targets during the fourth quarter, and it has cut prices to partially make up for the halving of a US tax credit that has acted as a buyers' incentive. The credit is set to drop again in July before disappearing entirely at the end of the year. Tesla increased staff by 30% last year, which was "more th...
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