Tesla reportedly laid off about 200 workers from its Autopilot team and closed an office in California. Based on , the company notified employees of the move on Tuesday. Many of the affected employees are annotation specialists whose work involves evaluating and labeling Autopilot data obtained from customers. Along with the layoffs, Tesla closed the San Mateo location; Bloomberg reported that what was left of the 350-man team had been moved to another office nearby.
Tesla did not immediately respond to Engadget’s request for comment. The automaker does not yet operate a public relations department .
The cuts are almost certainly part of the by Tesla CEO Elon Musk to reduce costs at the company ahead of a potential recession. In early June, Musk told employees in a company-wide email that he had “extremely bad feelings” about the economy and that layoffs were imminent. He is later told Bloomberg he planned to reduce Tesla’s salaried workforce by about 10% over the next three months. The acceptance came after Musk told remote employees or lose their jobs. Tesla is said to have revealed its plans to return to the office, with reported that many employees returned to the company’s Fremont facility to find there were insufficient parking spaces and desks.
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