Former Tesla exec sues company for telework issue that threatened marriage

Posted on


Former Tesla executive Mike Tully is suing the company for an issue with a telework policy he says the company agreed to, then changed their minds. He says it caused an agonizing medical condition to reappear and nearly caused his marriage to fall apart.

Tully filed the suit last month in a California court and claimed Tesla offered him a work-from-home position. He then claims Tesla instead pulled the job offer from him and offered him a separate position, which would require him and his family to relocate.

He is calling it a “bait-and-switch” after “being promised and assured” he would not have to move for the role.

Tully was with Bank of America for sixteen years before he accepted a job at Tesla’s Fremont corporate offices. The job with Bank of America was in Irvine, California, roughly 400 miles south of Fremont, where his new position would be.

The complaint, according to The Independent, said that:

“He made it patently clear to everyone at Tesla that [leaving] Irvine was not negotiable.”

However, Tesla then asked Tully to relocate and his wife threatened to divorce him if he moved her and their two children. The complaint says he felt “completely blindsided and misled by Tesla and its leadership team.”

Tully started at Tesla in April 2022, and he received “excellent” performance reviews in his first two months at the automaker.

However, after two months, Tully’s position was impacted by CEO Elon Musk’s pushback against telework.

Tesla has had a very strict policy about work-from-home positions, as Musk said a few years ago that anyone working at the company would need to work 40 hours in a physical setting per week or resign.

Musk is also pushing for an end to federal telework, as he and Vivek Ramaswamy are heading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Tully was given until December 2022 to move or he would be terminated. His reasons for not leaving Irvine were because of a family business that was there and his wife still managed, and his children planned to attend universities nearby.

However, the divorce threat and Chron’s and IBD issues appeared due to stress:

“They discussed various options, such as a nearby office or moving [Tully] to another division within the company that was within an easier commute distance. [The HR exec] stated he understood the concern, and he would get back to him.”

Tully was fired the next day. He is asking for punitive, economic, and special damages, along with injunctive relief that would prohibit Tesla from engaging in these behaviors in the future.

Need accessories for your Tesla? Check out the Teslarati Marketplace:

Please email me with questions and comments at joey@teslarati.com. I’d love to chat! You can also reach me on Twitter @KlenderJoey, or if you have news tips, you can email us at tips@teslarati.com.

Former Tesla exec sues company for telework issue that threatened marriage





Source

Tesla analyst equates Cybertruck discounts to need for smaller, cheaper pickup

Posted on


A Tesla analyst believes the company is discounting the Cybertruck because consumers are thirsting for a smaller, more affordable all-electric pickup from the company.

The note, which came from Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry, comes just a day after Tesla listed several Cybertrucks on its Inventory website, which has drawn mixed reactions from investors and fans.

Some believe the move was a sign Tesla was having trouble moving Cybertruck as demand levels seem to be in question. It was the best-selling EV pickup in the United States for 2024 and the fifth-best-selling EV overall for the year.

Chowdhry believes the move to discount these trucks is exactly that: a demand issue.

He thinks that Tesla should develop a different Cybertruck version, one that would be smaller and more compact and would cost significantly less.

The size should be reduced by 20 percent, Chowdhry suggests, which could help Tesla enable a price point between $40,000 and $60,000 for the Cybertruck. This would be close to where it was priced at the unveiling event in 2019, as it ranged from $39,990 for the Single Motor to $69,990 for the Tri-Motor.

Prices increased substantially between the unveiling and the first deliveries.

Chowdhry also believes that Cybertruck incentives will not spur demand, potentially because many people who are buying the pickup at its price of either $79,990 or $99,990 won’t qualify for the incentives anyway.

Cybertruck demand is certainly a topic that many might have questions about, and while it did sell strongly last year and rank highly, there are certainly some issues with the massive pre-order log that Tesla once claimed to have and the inventory.

If the pre-order log was over one million vehicles long, Tesla should have no inventory of the Cybertruck, even if half of those buyers decided to hold off because of the massive uptick in pricing.

Musk once said Tesla Cybertruck demand was “so far off the hook, you can’t even see the hook.” Last year, just under 39,000 Cybertrucks were sold, a far cry from the 1.9 million units that a crowd-sourced reservation tracker claimed.

Pricing is probably the biggest reason for having inventory on these pickups, but it might not hurt for Tesla to potentially encourage the idea of having something more compact as Ford has done. It would not be the worst thing in the world to have different options in the lineup, although it would increase manufacturing complexity.

Need accessories for your Tesla? Check out the Teslarati Marketplace:

Please email me with questions and comments at joey@teslarati.com. I’d love to chat! You can also reach me on Twitter @KlenderJoey, or if you have news tips, you can email us at tips@teslarati.com.

Tesla analyst equates Cybertruck discounts to need for smaller, cheaper pickup





Source

Musk’s pay package was ‘a problem’ for huge pension fund that sold entire Tesla stake

Posted on


Elon Musk’s potential $56 billion pay package was the reason Europe’s largest pension fund sold its entire Tesla $TSLA stake recently, as the firm sold all of its $585 million worth of shares.

A spokesperson for Stichting Pensioenfonds ABP said to Bloomberg that “We had a problem” with Musk’s pay package, which is still in limbo after it was ruled to be unreasonable by Delaware Chancery Court Judge Kathaleen McCormick.

The massive $56 billion was voted in by Tesla shareholders on two separate occasions, once in 2018 and another last year. The second vote for the pay package to be given to Musk followed an initial ruling from Judge McCormick that invalidated the $56 billion.

Stichting Pensioenfonds ABP was one shareholder that voted against Musk’s pay package.

A Dutch newspaper known as Het Financieele Dagblad first reported the story but also listed Tesla’s working conditions as a reason to sell its stake in Tesla.

The timing of the sale is interesting, to say the least. Judge McCormick denied the pay package once again in December, and Tesla appealed the ruling. It is hard to see what will change the Judge’s mind at this point, especially as she has already ruled against it twice.

Some believe Musk will still get the pay package one way or another. Wedbush’s Dan Ives wrote to investors in December:

“We continue to believe Tesla and Musk will fight this tooth and nail all the way to the Supreme Court in Delaware and then potentially to the Federal system as this remains a frustrating headache for Tesla, Musk, and its shareholders. We also believe this case could be the catalyst for more public companies to leave the state of Delaware for their corporation status as the legal precedents set in this Tesla/ Musk case is very eye opening to public Boards around the country and go against shareholders vote in a dangerous precedent in our view.”

Need accessories for your Tesla? Check out the Teslarati Marketplace:

Please email me with questions and comments at joey@teslarati.com. I’d love to chat! You can also reach me on Twitter @KlenderJoey, or if you have news tips, you can email us at tips@teslarati.com.

Musk’s pay package was ‘a problem’ for huge pension fund that sold entire Tesla stake





Source