Has Tesla Peaked?
Tesla is in a bad spot.
The world’s largest electric carmaker on Monday told employees it would lay off more than 10 percent of its work force, and two senior executives said they were leaving.
Earlier this month Tesla announced a stunning drop in sales, delivering 387,000 cars worldwide in the first quarter, down 8.5 percent from the same time last year. The company’s stock has fallen more than 35 percent this year, including a 5.5 percent drop on Monday. Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, appears strangely disengaged with the company’s stumbles and preoccupied with other pursuits.
Tesla is still the biggest electric vehicle manufacturer, credited with almost single-handedly creating the E.V. sector. As Tesla went, so went the industry.
But in a remarkably short period of time, the electric vehicle business appears to have untethered itself from Tesla.
American, Korean, Chinese and European carmakers all have big, durable E.V. product lines with growing sales. Ford sold 20,223 electric vehicles in the first quarter of the year, an increase of 86 percent from the previous year, making it the second best-selling E.V. brand in the U.S.
BMW said it delivered 82,700 all-electric cars around the world in the first three months of the year, up sharply from a year earlier. And in China, where Musk helped establish the market for electric vehicles, and the expertise to produce them, Tesla is losing its edge over Chinese competitors.