Tesla Birth Watch 26: Spring Cleaning Comes Early

Frank Williams
by Frank Williams

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.

Frank Williams
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  • Paul Niedermeyer Paul Niedermeyer on Jan 18, 2008

    Maybe the series needs to be changed to "Tesla Stillbirth Watch".

  • Starlightmica Starlightmica on Jan 18, 2008

    Or, partial birth...eh, nevermind.

  • Ralph SS Ralph SS on Jan 18, 2008

    All this because of transmission problems. Go figure. Well, at least they have the new technology to sell.

  • Redbarchetta Redbarchetta on Jan 18, 2008

    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.

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