This just keeps getting funnier. Tesla operates like a startup, and it’s clear that comes from the lack of focus and seriousness at the very top of the organization. Build quality and reliability keeps getting worse, not better. https://t.co/dyrI9o33zR
— Jean-Michel Connard ??? (@torriangray) April 15, 2024
Cybertruck deliveries halted due to car being a big piece of shit that doesn't work: https://t.co/qUPo6eZthW
— Defector (@DefectorMedia) April 15, 2024
Patrick Redford, at Defector:
Tesla, a future case study for securities law classes across America, had to stop delivering Cybertrucks this past weekend. No, not because the hundred-thousand–dollar medium-duty pickup, which is only any of those things in the loosest interpretive sense, tends to brick when it gets rained on; nor because its stainless steel panels get all rusty and nasty-looking after weeks exposed to the rare, harsh condition of “being outside.” Perhaps you think it has something to do with the shorter-than-advertised driving range and longer-than-advertised charging time, but no: Rather, the cause of this snag is that the trucks struggle with the basics of stopping and going, by which I mean that the accelerator pedal cover slides off and gets stuck under a panel and locks the accelerator pressed down and keeps the Cybertruck stuck at maximum velocity…
Suckers who ordered Cybertrucks a few months or years ago and expected deliveries this weekend did not get their cars, nor a precise explanation for why they did not get their cars, but instead were simply told, “Hi, we have just been informed of an unexpected delay regarding the preparation of your vehicle. We need to cancel your delivery appointment for tomorrow and we will reach out again when we’re able to get you back on the schedule.” Maybe someone with a hot glue gun will get on this one…
As the Bay Area is both a nexus for world-class goobers and the region where Tesla used to be and kinda-sorta still is headquartered, I have seen a lot of Cybertrucks out in the wild over the past few months. They are remarkably fake- and shitty-looking in any context (Is that a big toaster with wi-fi next to me at the exit? Who’s driving the scrap metal assemblage with Bryan Colangelo-esque proportions? Why does every Cybertruck driver I glance at appear to be simultaneously peacocking for attention but also totally embarrassed, haunted by the unexamined knowledge that as a maneuver in a culture war they paid $100,000 for a car that doesn’t work?), though I saw one in the Santa Cruz mountains this past weekend. It looked even more jarringly synthetic and stupid in a truck-style environment, as if 10 seconds on a semi-paved road would undo the whole rickety car. I felt, amid standard-issue disgust and mockery, personal embarrassment to be paying through the nose to live in a place where the coolest thing you can do is cosplay as a 6-year-old’s idea of the coolest guy in the world.
Tesla to cut 14,000 jobs as Elon Musk bids to make it ‘lean, innovative and hungry’ https://t.co/5kXQNhJyO3
— Guardian Tech (@guardiantech) April 15, 2024
The BBC, via Yahoo Finance (British publications have a five-hour head start):
Tesla will lay off more than 10% of its global electric vehicle workforce.
In a memo, first reported by news website Electrek, billionaire owner Elon Musk told staff there was nothing he hated more, “but it must be done”.
The world’s largest vehicle-maker by market value had 140,473 employees globally as of December, according to its latest annual report…
The electric vehicle (EV) maker has been slow to refresh its aging models as high interest rates have sapped consumer appetite for big-ticket items.