According to media reports, Tesla, the world's largest electric vehicle manufacturer, sent an email to all employees on Monday, announcing a global layoff of more than 10%, or about 14,000 employees. Musk emphasized in the letter that cost reduction and efficiency improvement are extremely important at the moment.

This marks Tesla's fifth major layoff since it laid off 2% of its workforce in 2017. In 2018, 2019 and 2022, Tesla cut its workforce by 9%, 7% and 3% respectively.

Despite several rounds of layoffs, Tesla's overall workforce has grown significantly, expanding from 38,000 employees at the beginning of 2018 to 140,000 employees at the beginning of 2024.

The background of Tesla's massive layoffs is that demand for electric vehicles continues to be sluggish.

Tesla delivery suffered a "Waterloo" in the first quarter. Tesla's delivery volume fell 8.5% year-on-year to approximately 386,800 vehicles, and dropped more than 20% month-on-month, which was far lower than analysts' previous expectations of 449,000 vehicles, setting a new record since records began. The biggest miss is expected.

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives called it "an unexplainable disaster" despite poor expectations. The disappointing results also suggest that Tesla may struggle to meet first-quarter profit expectations that have been lowered by Wall Street.

Since the beginning of this year, Tesla’s stock price has fallen by more than 30%.

The specific content of the email is as follows:

Over the years, our company has expanded rapidly around the world, with multiple factories undergoing large-scale expansions. With rapid growth comes duplication of roles and job functions in some areas. As the company prepares for its next phase of growth, it is critical to take a comprehensive look at every aspect of the company and seek to reduce costs and increase efficiency.

As part of this move, we conducted a thorough review of our organizational structure and made the difficult decision to reduce our workforce by more than 10% globally. There is nothing more difficult than this, but it must be done to keep us lean, innovative, and into the next phase of our growth cycle.

I want to thank each of my colleagues who are leaving Tesla for their hard work over the years. I deeply appreciate the many contributions you have made to our mission. I wish you all the best in your future opportunities. Saying goodbye is always hard.

For those of you who are staying, I want to thank you in advance for the difficult work you are about to face. We are developing some of the most revolutionary technologies in automotive, energy and artificial intelligence. As we prepare for the next phase of growth as a company, your determination will play a huge role in achieving our goals.