A new report confirms that Tesla has reduced its workforce at Gigafactory Berlin by roughly 1,700 employees over the last year. The cuts come despite the plant manager repeatedly denying any staff reductions were taking place.
We have been reporting on the difficult situation at Tesla Gigafactory Berlin for a while now. The math just hasn’t been adding up.
We recently reported on how Tesla Gigafactory Berlin’s days might be numbered as the factory seems redundant given Tesla’s current delivery numbers in Europe, and management is threatening a stop in investment if a union takes control of its workers’ council.
Now, a new report from the German business newspaper Handelsblatt confirms that the automaker has been quietly downsizing the plant’s workforce significantly, based on figures reported by the workers’ council.
According to internal documents from the election committee of the Tesla works council, cited by Handelsblatt (German paywall), the number of employees at the plant has dropped to 10,703.
That is a decline of roughly 1,700 employees (or nearly 14%) compared to the 12,415 workers employed at the factory during the last works council election in 2024.
The job cuts are particularly notable because André Thierig, the plant manager at Giga Berlin, has repeatedly denied that Tesla was reducing headcount. As recently as last month, Thierig claimed there were “no plans” for staff reductions, even as production volumes remained stagnant or declined.
Some of the attrition could be explained by a global wave of layoffs in 2024 that slashed Tesla’s workforce by 10%, but it appeared to have continued after that.
This quiet culling of the workforce aligns with previous reports we’ve covered regarding Tesla’s declining sales in Europe. The European EV market has become incredibly competitive with the arrival of more Chinese models and strong performances from legacy automakers, leaving Tesla with more production capacity in Germany than it currently needs.
It is unclear if these reductions were made through layoffs, voluntary buyouts, or simply by not renewing temporary contracts, a common tactic Tesla uses to adjust its workforce without triggering mass layoff notifications.
Electrek’s Take
This is exactly what we were afraid of. When you have a factory capable of producing 375,000+ vehicles a year but you are selling significantly fewer cars than that in the entire region, something has to give.
The fact that the plant manager denied that Tesla is reducing its workforce while their own workers’ council data clearly shows a 14% reduction in the workforce is classic Tesla transparency, or lack thereof.
It adds a lot of weight to the theory that Giga Berlin is in trouble. If Tesla can’t fill the factory’s capacity, it is just burning cash. With the Berlin expansion already on hold and now the workforce shrinking, the narrative of “unlimited demand” in Europe is officially dead.
The question now is whether Tesla can maintain even this lower level of employment at the plant, or if we are seeing the beginning of a slow shutdown.
As I reported earlier this month, if IG Metall gets control of the workers council, I wouldn’t be surprised if Tesla uses this as a reason to divest from the factory.
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