Martin Eberhard isn't the only one to get the boot from Tesla Motors. The Mercury News reports a number of employees, including "several senior executives" have been shown the door in what company founder Eberhard calls "firings," not layoffs. Daryl Siry, Tesla's vice president in charge of trying to convince people otherwise, said the "layoffs" were related to "performance management." The firings were outed by Eberhard which he called it a "bloodbath" on his teslafounders blog. Marty listed 26 people who've gotten the ax and warned of terminations to come. I got that information from another news report, because when I went to the site to read what he wrote , I found this:
This blog entry has been taken down at the strong request of Tesla's management. By taking it down, I am in no way admitting that anything I wrote was in violation of any agreement I signed with Tesla Motors, and I stand behind the truth of what I wrote.
But it was explained to me that Tesla and its financial backer(s) can spend far more than I can on a lawsuit…
Most of the comments on this blog entry have also be taken down; sorry for the inconvenience.
There was no mention of any of this on Tesla's site, where the last news release listed was about Eberhard's "transition" to their "advisory board." If GM fired 10 percent of their employees or a number of executives got the boot at Chrysler or Ford, their PR departments would be all over it for damage control and every major news outlet would have it on the front page. Yet Tesla wants its cull to fly under the radar. Oh well.
This was a smart move for Tesla. You don’t need managers and employees who know about all the development work that went into the roadster when you are planning to shut that project down and sell off the scraps.
Deleted blog entry cache here with names deleted
Thanks for the link starlightmica.
This just gets better every day. Of course, not a peep from the mainstream press. When Chrysler lays people off, people are all over it (NPR, NYT, CNN, etc).
Goes to show you, all you have to do is make a bunch of crazy promises.
Another possible explanation is that investors have had it with the broken promises and missed deadlines. In most industries it is common for senior executives and managers who consistently miss their targets to get the boot (unless you work for the 2.8). The current head of Tesla comes from just such an industry.
I worked for a start up company a number of years ago – this is exactly what happened with them when several of their customers (major telecoms during the bust) went bankrupt and money started drying up…needless to say you can bet more lay offs are coming and one of two things is going to happen – they are going to be bought out by another company or are going completely bust.
The start up I worked for was later bought out and survives today, but with about 1/4 of the workforce it had when I was there.
Looking at the recent pow-wow the current leader had with GM I would almost bet that they canned a lot of people in preparation to be purchased by GM to help with the Volt project.
Will the folks that put down payments on these things be able to get their money back?
Maybe the series needs to be changed to “Tesla Stillbirth Watch”.
Or, partial birth…eh, nevermind.
All this because of transmission problems. Go figure. Well, at least they have the new technology to sell.
Wow this explains why they were a no show in Detriot. I was wondering when Eberharts no disclose agreement was going to come back to bite him. Thanks for the link starlightmica that list really bring this into perspective. How can you axe key personnel before you have truely finished development on a huge project like this, talk about dooming it to fail.
RF – So I guess they will be pushing back their delivery date yet again. To never possibly.