Elon Musk says the autoworkers union has too much power over the White House while Tesla cuts 200 Autopilot jobs

As a consequence of the advertised project to decrease its workforce by 10% in order to stay competitive, Tesla is slashing 200 jobs from its autonomous driving division in San Mateo, California. Recently, Elon Musk said that he will have to cut every tenth job at Tesla since supply chain issues and component price increases are eating into its aggressive growth plans.

While jokesters lovingly called this the "decimation" of Tesla jobs, the company is apparently going ahead with the plan and inside sources reveal that the Autopilot improvement department in San Mateo will lay off more than 50% of its staff, while the rest will be spread to other offices.

All of this is happening as Elon Musk railed in a wide-ranging interview that the United Auto Workers (UAW) union has "so much power over the White House, they can exclude Tesla from an EV (Electric Vehicle) summit." He was apparently referring to a meeting of industry execs at the White House last summer where Tesla's CEO wasn't invited. Elon Musk did attend the White House summit on EV charging interoperability back in April, though.

According to the Volkswagen Group's CEO, VW will catch up to Tesla in 2025, as its current mishaps are of Elon Musk's own making since he spread Tesla too thin trying to increase production at a number of new Gigafactories at once:

Elon has to ramp up two highly complex factories in Austin and Gruenheide at the same time – as well as expand production in Shanghai. That’s going to take the strength out of him.

While Elon Musk confirmed that the new Giga Berlin and Austin factories are hemorrhaging billions, Tesla is trying to preserve its profit margins in several ways. On one hand it raised the price of its electric cars numerous times just this year, while on the other it is freezing hiring and starting to shed jobs as the fresh round of Autopilot unit layoffs exemplify. 

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