Tesla laying off 3,600 workers as it works to turn profit

DETROIT — Electric car maker Tesla Inc. is laying off about 3,600 workers, mainly from its salaried ranks, as it slashes costs in an effort to deliver on CEO Elon Musk’s promise to turn a profit in the second half of the year.

In an email to workers Tuesday, Musk said the cuts amount to about 9 percent of the company’s workforce of 40,000.

Tesla would not say how much money the layoffs would save, but it said no factory workers would be affected as the company continues to ramp up production of its lower-priced Model 3 compact car.

The move is part of an organizational restructuring Musk announced earlier in the year.

“Tesla has grown and evolved rapidly over the past several years, which has resulted in some duplication of roles and some job functions that, while they made sense in the past, are difficult to justify today,” Musk wrote in the email. He thanked departing employees for their hard work and said Tesla is providing “significant salary and stock vesting” to those being let go, based on their length of service.

Tesla has not made an annual profit in its 15 years of doing business, and it has posted only two quarterly net profits.

The company let go of 400 to 700 workers last fall after completing annual performance reviews, and it laid off a small number of workers back in 2008.

Musk wrote in the email that the company will never achieve its mission to help move the world to cleaner energy “unless we eventually demonstrate that we can be sustainably profitable.”