Nearly 500 Tesla employees in Palo Alto are facing layoffs as part of the car company’s plan to slash more than 6,000 jobs in various California and Texas locations, according to documents filed with California’s employment department.
The largest job losses will occur at the car company’s Fremont factories, where Tesla plans to lay off 2,267 employees, according to notifications that the company filed with the state pursuant to California’s Workers Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act. It is also reportedly looking to lay off about 2,688 employees in Austin, Texas, according to CNBC.
In Palo Alto, Tesla plans to shed 486 jobs, mostly in its Stanford Research Park facilities. The company plans to lay off 237 employees in its former headquarters at 1501 Page Mill Road office and another 155 from its 3500 Deer Creek Road location, according to WARN notices.
The company also plans to lay off 81 employees from 3000 Hanover St., the former HP campus that Tesla purchased last year and is now converting into global engineering headquarters. The notice also states that 11 employees would be laid off from its dealership at 4180 El Camino Real and two from its Stanford Shopping Center location.
The terminations are set to commence during the 14-day period beginning in June 14, according to the notices submitted by Rissa Royal, the company’s manager of people operations.
The announced layoffs are part of a broader strategy by Tesla CEO Elon Musk to lay off about 10% of the company’s global workforce, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The company had experienced declining stock value, increased competition and an 8.5% year-over-year decline in deliveries in the first quarter of the year, the Chronicle reported.
The company had been based in Palo Alto until 2021, when Musk shifted its headquarters to Austin, Texas. But the company retained and, ultimately, expanded its footprint in Stanford Research Park when it acquired the former Hewlett Packard Enterprise campus in February 2023.
Earlier this year, the company signed a deal with the city of Palo Alto to upgrade utilities in the area. Patrick Bean, Tesla’s director of charging and energy policies, said at the time that the company was planning to invest about $150 million in the new engineering headquarters on Hanover Street.