Tesla recently announced through a spokesperson that it is reducing prices of selected models in Germany and other parts of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. This move comes as a sequel to the unveiling of the recent weekend price changes in China and the United States. Importantly, in Germany, the electric car company dropped the price of its Model 3 rear-wheel drive from 42,990 Euros to 40,990 Euros, thereby showing a major adjustment from February pricing.
Tesla has been adopting the price reduction strategy in order to woo customers amid slowing EV demand and its ageing model lineup. In a separate development, the company is planning to cut 10% jobs globally, laying off 285 employees in Buffalo, New York, the electric-vehicle maker said in a legally mandated notice. The automaker is under pressure from falling sales, and an intensifying price war for EVs due to which it announced its latest round of jobs cuts last week in an internal memo that was seen by Reuters.
The latest notice was issued under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act which requires employers to provide a 60-day notice before layoffs. The memo notified that the layoffs would start on July 15 and that they were due to “economic” reasons. The carmaker has a total of 2,032 employees across the two impacted sites in Buffalo, meaning that the cuts will affect about 14% of its workers there.
The plants in upstate New York were built to produce solar roof tiles. Tesla also makes fast-charging equipment at the location, which hosts staff that label data for its Autopilot driver-assistance technology and is set to be the home of its Dojo supercomputer project.
In February last year, the EV maker had let go 4% of the employees in the Autopilot labeling team in Buffalo as part of a performance review cycle conducted every six months. The move had come just a day after the workers launched a campaign to form a union, but Tesla had said the affected staff were identified before the union campaign was announced.