Tesla last night suffered its biggest drop in revenues for more than a decade as demand for electric cars stalls.
Just hours after announcing details of more than 6,000 job cuts in Texas and California, the company posted sales of £17billion for the three months to the end of March.
The 9 per cent fall was the largest since 2012. Profits also slumped 55 per cent to £910million compared to £6.4billion a year ago.
Tesla chief executive Elon Musk said the company would speed up its launch of ‘more affordable’ vehicles.
The results came just hours after Tesla announced details of 2,688 job cuts at its factory in Texas, where it makes the Cybertruck and Model Y cars, and another 3,332 in California.
£45bn pay deal: But Tesla boss Elon Musk (pictured) plans to axe 10% of the electric car maker’s workforce worldwide
The job losses are part of plans to axe 10 per cent of staff worldwide to drive down costs – resulting in a total of 14,000 job losses.
The layoffs come at a rocky time for Tesla, which has been suffering with slowing demand for electric vehicles and production delays.
Earlier this month the group revealed its first year-on-year fall in sales since 2020.
The group delivered 386,810 vehicles in the three months to the end of March, down by more than fifth from the previous quarter and around 9 per cent less than in the same period of 2023.
And the total number of cars delivered by Tesla was also well below Wall Street expectations of 454,000.
However, Tesla was able to reclaim its crown as the world’s leading EV seller.
BYD, which is backed by investor Warren Buffett, overtook Tesla in the final quarter of 2023 when it sold 526,409 electric vehicles compared to Tesla’s 484,507.
This led some analysts to dub the company as the ‘Tesla Killer’ after it came out on top in a brutal price war in China, a country which builds and buys more electric cars than the rest of the world combined.
In January, Musk warned that Chinese car makers were set to ‘demolish’ global rivals.
Tesla also faces internal turmoil. The board is seeking to convince shareholders to approve a £45billion pay deal for Musk – just months after the package was struck down in court.
The payday, decided in 2018, would be the biggest in US corporate history.
