We guess the “robust demand” story at Tesla is finally over…

The EV company, which has seen its stock shellacked over the last month and its CEO pre-occupied with his latest tryst in Twitter, is reportedly implementing a hiring freeze and a new round of layoffs, according to a report by electrek. 

The move comes after the company had already asked some executives to “pause all hiring” and cut 10% of their staff back in June, the report notes. The latest round of layoffs has been attributed to Elon Musk’s “very bad feeling” about the U.S. economy.

Musk took to Twitter just yesterday to blame Tesla’s stock price plunge (it’s down about 20% over the last month) on the Federal Reserve inhibiting demand. 

As electrek correctly notes, the hiring pause and layoffs at the company should be even more alarming now, as Tesla was looking to forge forward with new factories in places like the U.S. and Germany. 

Over the last few months, production at Tesla’s key Shanghai plant has also been under scrutiny, with the plant scheduled to take a several day break before the new year, ostensibly to allow demand to catch up to supply and potentially to make upgrades and modifications to its line. 

“Tteams will be expected to make layoffs during the first quarter of 2023,” electrek wrote. “It’s not clear how extensive the hiring freeze will be as Tesla is still planning to expand in some manufacturing locations. No further details were made available at this time.”

The layoffs also come after price cuts and temporary discounts on some Tesla vehicles that have left some sell side analysts to pose the question of whether or not the company is seeing a demand problem. 

And the “diamond hands” over at electrek have certainly taken notice. They warned their pro-Tesla readership: “Until now, Tesla shareholders could still hold on to the thought that while the stock is doing poorly, Tesla’s financials and operations are still virtually unaffected. Now it looks like there might be some worrying trends that Tesla is seeing internally leading to those moves.”