Tesla’s profits dip as Elon Musk goes on rant against staff working from home

Electric car maker Tesla’s profits took a dive in the third quarter, according to an earnings call on Wednesday in which the company’s chief Elon Musk blamed staff working from home for being “detached from reality”.

Tesla’s profits in Q3 of 2023 have plunged by over 40 per cent compared to the gains it made in the same period last year after the company slashed its car prices by around 25 per cent in an attempt to compete with other EV makers.

The EV manufacturer reported a net profit of about $1.9bn for the time between July through September, which is a 44 percent drop from the $3.3bn it made in the same three-month period last year.

While the company has seen a small increase in overall revenue of about $23bn from the $21bn the same time last year, the figures are still lower than Wall Street expectations.

Mr Musk also dampened hopes of the company’s anticipated Cybertruck reviving profits in the near future, announcing that it would take at least 18 months for the truck to become profitable as it could go on sale only by the end of November.

“There will be enormous challenges in reaching volume production with Cybertruck and making the Cybertruck cash flow positive,” the Tesla titan told investors and analysts in the earnings call.

“The blood, sweat and tears that will be required to achieve that is just staggering,” he added.

Over the last year, Tesla has slashed the prices of its cars by quarter to boost sales.

Growing competition with the introduction of EVs by other car makers in the US, including BMW, Toyota, Mercedes, GM and Hyundai, has also coincided with Tesla’s share of vehicles in the EV market reducing in the last quarter.

In the earnings call, Mr Musk also said staff working from home are taking advantage of those who cannot work from home.

“Like... what about all the people that have to come to the factory and build the cars?” he asked.

“Why did I sleep in the factory so many times? Because it mattered,” the Tesla chief said.

Mr Musk echoed the statements he made in an interview with CNN earlier this year in which he called remote work “morally wrong”, arguing that it is unfair to those who cannot have the option.

“Get off the goddamn moral high horse with the work-from-home bullshit,” he said.

Tesla also pointed fingers at its reduction in production while it upgraded its factories as one of the factors behind the profit slump.

It said it has also been making big investments in AI and “commissioned one of the world’s largest supercomputers.”

“We have more than doubled the size of our AI training compute, accommodating for both our growing data set & Optimus, which is currently being trained for simple tasks through AI rather than hardcoded software, while its hardware continues to improve,” Tesla said.

But all is not gloomy as the company says the first deliveries of its Cybertruck are scheduled for 30 November and Tesla’s Model Y remains the “best-selling vehicle of any kind” in Europe.