A bit of a puzzle recently emerged from electric vehicle giant Tesla (TSLA), specifically about staffing at its Gigafactory in Berlin. Reports suggest that the plant has lost about 14% of its workforce over the last year, but there have been no formally announced layoffs. Trying to piece together just what happened is proving complex. But the news was good enough for investors regardless, and Tesla shares gained modestly in Wednesday afternoon’s trading.
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Internal documents issued by the election committee of the Tesla works council note that the total employee count at the Berlin Gigafactory is 10,703. In 2024, back during the last works council election, the Gigafactory had a worker count of 12,415. This is a shortfall of around 1,700 workers, about 14% fewer workers than Tesla had at that factory about a year prior.
But, as noted previously, plant manager Andre Thierig has denied on several occasions any kind of headcount reduction. So if there were ai-optionality-justifying-a-hold-rating-ratings">no plans for staff cuts, why is staff cut? Some point to a wave of layoffs in 2024, but that number was supposed to stop at 10%. Where did the rest of the vanished jobs go? Some blame “classic Tesla transparency,” suggesting Tesla cut jobs that it did not care to talk about.
FSD Transfers End! Maybe. Or Not.
The recent reports that suggest that Tesla is planning to end the one-time purchase plan for Full Self-Driving (FSD) access also note that this is not the first time such a plan has been advanced. Back in 2023, Tesla noted the FSD transfer program was a “one-time amnesty.”
But it was not one time, far from it, in fact. The one-time amnesty returned at least twice, reports suggest, with some calling it a “…recurring end-of-quarter sales incentive.” While this latest revelation of no longer selling FSD as an option carries a slightly different weight, some wonder if this is just Tesla’s latest attempt to spur sales.
Is Tesla a Buy, Hold or Sell?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Hold consensus rating on TSLA stock based on 12 Buys, 11 Holds, and seven Sells assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 1% rally in its share price over the past year, the average TSLA price target of $397.47 per share implies 6.36% downside risk.
