Elon Musk’s underlings at Tesla are accustomed to chaos. It comes with the territory of working for a chief executive who sets exacting targets and often abruptly switches directions – whose biographer describes his more intense moods as “demon mode”.
But even by Tesla standards, this year has been unruly. Its stock has slid more than 40 per cent amid slumping sales, confusing product decisions and more price cuts. Its once-dominant position in China’s EV market is under assault.
A visit with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi for an expected investment announcement was called off at the last minute. All the while, the board has tried to revive a $56 billion payout to Mr Musk that a judge voided in January, on the grounds that directors had acted as “supine servants” to the chief executive.
On Tuesday, Tesla is expected to report a 40 per cent plunge in operating profit and its first revenue decline in four years. Mr Musk has ordered up the company’s biggest layoffs ever and staked its future on a next-generation, self-driving vehicle concept called the robotaxi.
People familiar with his directives are unsettled by the changes the chief executive wants to push through.
The idea of creating a self-driving taxi service has been floated at Tesla for at least eight years, but the company has yet to stand up much of the infrastructure it would need, nor has it secured regulatory approval to test such cars on public roads.
For the moment, Mr Musk has put off plans for a $25,000, mass-market vehicle that many Tesla investors – and some insiders – are pushing for and believe is crucial to the car maker’s future.
After media reports on the strategic shift, key managers including Drew Baglino, an 18-year company veteran who headed Tesla’s power-train engineering and energy business, have left.
Mr Musk, 52, has steered Tesla out of many jams in the past. At $469 billion, the company is still valued at more than nine times the market capitalisation of General Motors or Ford Motor.
But after losing about $350 billion in market capitalisation over four months, employees, investors and analysts alike are bewildered and second-guessing the company’s strategy.
“The stock will need to undergo a potentially painful transition in ownership base, with investors previously focused on Tesla’s EV volume and cost advantage potentially throwing in the towel,” Deutsche Bank analyst Emmanuel Rosner said last week, downgrading the shares from a buy and slashing his price target by more than a third.
Mr Musk has signalled on his social media network that the recent moves amount to activating wartime chief executive mode.
He liked a post saying as much after sending a companywide email announcing that Tesla was cutting more than 10 per cent of global headcount, which would mean eliminating at least 14,000 jobs.
The actual number of people ushered out may exceed 20,000, according to sources.
Mr Musk’s reasoning, according to a source, is that Tesla should reduce headcount by 20 per cent because its vehicle deliveries dropped by that amount from the fourth quarter to the first quarter.
For those still among Tesla’s ranks after this culling, Mr Musk has radically altered the marching orders. The company is all out “for autonomy”, he declared last week.
The robotaxi is now taking precedence over a cheaper car he first teased four years ago, both with respect to setting timetables for prototypes and arranging production capacity, a source familiar with the planning said.
Mr Musk has talked a big game about autonomy for more than a decade, and has convinced customers to pay thousands of dollars for a product Tesla has marketed as Full Self-Driving, or FSD.
The name is a misnomer – FSD requires constant supervision and does not render vehicles autonomous – but Mr Musk has repeatedly predicted it is on the verge of measuring up to the branding.
“I’m the boy who cried FSD,” he said in July.
Mr Musk and top engineers are particularly bullish about a major change in how FSD now works. Cameras placed around the company’s cars are taking in video and using this footage to dictate how the vehicle drives, instead of relying on software code.
Ashok Elluswamy, a director of Tesla’s autopilot programme, wrote on X last month that this should lead to “unprecedented progress”.
But optimism around FSD and Mr Musk’s belief that this new approach could bring about robotaxis is clouding the future of Tesla’s $25,000 car project. Sources disputed the notion that the programme has been cancelled altogether.
All along, the company has been pursuing a cheaper vehicle architecture that will underpin several different types of models, one of which would have no steering wheel or pedals.
While these people confirmed the robotaxi is being prioritised, one described the next-generation vehicle project as an effort to wring cost reductions out of components and production methods, then apply those innovations to cheaper iterations of the Model Y and Model 3, the company’s two most popular EVs.
Teams are placing particular emphasis on bringing these cost savings to bear with the Model Y, the best-selling vehicle in the world last year.
It is unclear just how much solace this might be to investors who have been spooked by reports that Tesla’s answer to affordable options such as the Toyota Corolla has been scrapped entirely.
Many are concerned that the only new model the company will offer to consumers in the half decade after the Model Y’s debut will be the Cybertruck, an expensive pickup that is difficult to build.
Last week, the company recalled the almost 3,900 Cybertrucks it has sold to fix faulty accelerator pedals.
“Investors, particularly institutional ones, are losing patience,” said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Steve Man. “The initial hype around Full Self-Driving and robotaxis has waned, and the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction.”
Reorienting Tesla around robotaxis is risky. While federal agencies have taken a permissive approach to regulating technology that has the potential to make roads safer, scrutiny at the state and local level has proven difficult to navigate.
Former Governor Doug Ducey welcomed Uber Technologies’s self-driving vehicles to Arizona “with open arms and wide-open roads” in 2016, only to ban them after one fatal collision with a pedestrian in 2018. Uber sold off its autonomous-vehicle unit two years later.
More recently, GM’s Cruise has spent the last six months working its way back to robotaxi testing after one of its cars struck and dragged a pedestrian in San Francisco. California also is holding up an expansion by Alphabet’s Waymo after several incidents, including a case in which one of its vehicles hit a cyclist.
Mr Musk, nevertheless, is betting Tesla can make robotaxis a reality by making FSD available to more consumers and cutting prices. He is pushing test drives and free 30-day trials to promote the feature, buoy revenue and ingest more camera footage.
Tesla is building data centres in Buffalo, New York, and Austin, where it is based, to process the footage captured by its vehicles and train its driving systems. The Buffalo site is further along while the Austin one is struggling with cost overruns, sources said.
The rationale for Tesla’s layoffs was not to squeeze savings from parts of the company and redirect spending to robotaxis, according to a source with knowledge of how job cuts were drawn up.
Teams across the organisation – including those working on autonomy – were given equal targets for headcount reduction, the source said.
Based on interviews with more than a dozen employees affected across the US, the firings were poorly organised and executed.
Emails that began “Dear Employee” were sent to personal addresses after midnight. At Tesla’s battery factory in Nevada, many staff started their Monday with gridlock at the front gate.
They were diverted to a car park where security guards scanned badges to discern who still had jobs and who had been laid off. One person who learnt they had been let go this way said it was the coldest and most humiliating experience of their career.
“A lot of people found out they were no longer employed in the middle of their shift or after arriving for what was thought to be just another Monday,” Jordana Hernandez, a former service manager in Virginia, wrote on LinkedIn.
“That’s the part that hurts. Giving literal blood sweat and tears to a company that showed zero humanity for the people that have sacrificed more than anyone outside of Tesla can imagine.”
The Saturday night before the layoffs began, Mr Musk was striking dramatic poses on the red carpet and joking about who should play him in a coming biopic.
Days later, Tesla chairwoman Robyn Denholm criticised a Delaware court for throwing out the board’s pay package for Mr Musk and urged shareholders to reapprove it.
Around this time, the chief executive learnt the company had skimped on what it was offering staff whose jobs were just eliminated.
“It has come to my attention today that some severance packages are incorrectly low,” Mr Musk wrote in an email to Tesla’s remaining employees.
“My apologies for this mistake. It is being corrected immediately.”
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Profile of VoucherSkout
Date of launch: November 2016
Founder: David Tobias
Based: Jumeirah Lake Towers
Sector: Technology
Size: 18 employees
Stage: Embarking on a Series A round to raise $5 million in the first quarter of 2019 with a 20 per cent stake
Investors: Seed round was self-funded with “millions of dollars”
AI traffic lights to ease congestion at seven points to Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Street
The seven points are:
Shakhbout bin Sultan Street
Dhafeer Street
Hadbat Al Ghubainah Street (outbound)
Salama bint Butti Street
Al Dhafra Street
Rabdan Street
Umm Yifina Street exit (inbound)
What sanctions would be reimposed?
Under ‘snapback’, measures imposed on Iran by the UN Security Council in six resolutions would be restored, including:
- An arms embargo
- A ban on uranium enrichment and reprocessing
- A ban on launches and other activities with ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, as well as ballistic missile technology transfer and technical assistance
- A targeted global asset freeze and travel ban on Iranian individuals and entities
- Authorisation for countries to inspect Iran Air Cargo and Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines cargoes for banned goods
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
WHAT IS A BLACK HOLE?
1. Black holes are objects whose gravity is so strong not even light can escape their pull
2. They can be created when massive stars collapse under their own weight
3. Large black holes can also be formed when smaller ones collide and merge
4. The biggest black holes lurk at the centre of many galaxies, including our own
5. Astronomers believe that when the universe was very young, black holes affected how galaxies formed
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
TEACHERS' PAY - WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
Pay varies significantly depending on the school, its rating and the curriculum. Here's a rough guide as of January 2021:
- top end schools tend to pay Dh16,000-17,000 a month - plus a monthly housing allowance of up to Dh6,000. These tend to be British curriculum schools rated 'outstanding' or 'very good', followed by American schools
- average salary across curriculums and skill levels is about Dh10,000, recruiters say
- it is becoming more common for schools to provide accommodation, sometimes in an apartment block with other teachers, rather than hand teachers a cash housing allowance
- some strong performing schools have cut back on salaries since the pandemic began, sometimes offering Dh16,000 including the housing allowance, which reflects the slump in rental costs, and sheer demand for jobs
- maths and science teachers are most in demand and some schools will pay up to Dh3,000 more than other teachers in recognition of their technical skills
- at the other end of the market, teachers in some Indian schools, where fees are lower and competition among applicants is intense, can be paid as low as Dh3,000 per month
- in Indian schools, it has also become common for teachers to share residential accommodation, living in a block with colleagues
The President's Cake
Director: Hasan Hadi
Starring: Baneen Ahmad Nayyef, Waheed Thabet Khreibat, Sajad Mohamad Qasem
Rating: 4/5
Our legal consultant
Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
Benefits of first-time home buyers' scheme
- Priority access to new homes from participating developers
- Discounts on sales price of off-plan units
- Flexible payment plans from developers
- Mortgages with better interest rates, faster approval times and reduced fees
- DLD registration fee can be paid through banks or credit cards at zero interest rates
More on Yemen's civil war
Closing the loophole on sugary drinks
As The National reported last year, non-fizzy sugared drinks were not covered when the original tax was introduced in 2017. Sports drinks sold in supermarkets were found to contain, on average, 20 grams of sugar per 500ml bottle.
The non-fizzy drink AriZona Iced Tea contains 65 grams of sugar – about 16 teaspoons – per 680ml can. The average can costs about Dh6, which would rise to Dh9.
Drinks such as Starbucks Bottled Mocha Frappuccino contain 31g of sugar in 270ml, while Nescafe Mocha in a can contains 15.6g of sugar in a 240ml can.
Flavoured water, long-life fruit juice concentrates, pre-packaged sweetened coffee drinks fall under the ‘sweetened drink’ category
Not taxed:
Freshly squeezed fruit juices, ground coffee beans, tea leaves and pre-prepared flavoured milkshakes do not come under the ‘sweetened drink’ band.
Breaking News: The Remaking of Journalism and Why It Matters Now
Alan Rushbridger, Canongate
Russia's Muslim Heartlands
Dominic Rubin, Oxford
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Pad Man
Dir: R Balki
Starring: Akshay Kumar, Sonam Kapoor, Radhika Apte
Three-and-a-half stars
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Results
1.30pm Handicap (PA) Dh50,000 (Dirt) 1,400m
Winner Al Suhooj, Saif Al Balushi (jockey), Khalifa Al Neyadi (trainer)
2pm Handicap (TB) 68,000 (D) 1,950m
Winner Miracle Maker, Xavier Ziani, Salem bin Ghadayer
2.30pm Maiden (TB) Dh60,000 (D) 1,600m
Winner Mazagran, Tadhg O’Shea, Satish Seemar
3pm Handicap (TB) Dh84,000 (D) 1,800m
Winner Tailor’s Row, Royston Ffrench, Salem bin Ghadayer
3.30pm Handicap (TB) Dh76,000 (D) 1,400m
Winner Alla Mahlak, Adrie de Vries, Rashed Bouresly
4pm Maiden (TB) Dh60,000 (D) 1,200m
Winner Hurry Up, Royston Ffrench, Salem bin Ghadayer
4.30pm Handicap (TB) Dh68,000 (D) 1,200m
Key findings of Jenkins report
- Founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al Banna, "accepted the political utility of violence"
- Views of key Muslim Brotherhood ideologue, Sayyid Qutb, have “consistently been understood” as permitting “the use of extreme violence in the pursuit of the perfect Islamic society” and “never been institutionally disowned” by the movement.
- Muslim Brotherhood at all levels has repeatedly defended Hamas attacks against Israel, including the use of suicide bombers and the killing of civilians.
- Laying out the report in the House of Commons, David Cameron told MPs: "The main findings of the review support the conclusion that membership of, association with, or influence by the Muslim Brotherhood should be considered as a possible indicator of extremism."
The years Ramadan fell in May
Read more from Aya Iskandarani
BMW M5 specs
Engine: 4.4-litre twin-turbo V-8 petrol enging with additional electric motor
Power: 727hp
Torque: 1,000Nm
Transmission: 8-speed auto
Fuel consumption: 10.6L/100km
On sale: Now
Price: From Dh650,000
Timeline
2012-2015
The company offers payments/bribes to win key contracts in the Middle East
May 2017
The UK SFO officially opens investigation into Petrofac’s use of agents, corruption, and potential bribery to secure contracts
September 2021
Petrofac pleads guilty to seven counts of failing to prevent bribery under the UK Bribery Act
October 2021
Court fines Petrofac £77 million for bribery. Former executive receives a two-year suspended sentence
December 2024
Petrofac enters into comprehensive restructuring to strengthen the financial position of the group
May 2025
The High Court of England and Wales approves the company’s restructuring plan
July 2025
The Court of Appeal issues a judgment challenging parts of the restructuring plan
August 2025
Petrofac issues a business update to execute the restructuring and confirms it will appeal the Court of Appeal decision
October 2025
Petrofac loses a major TenneT offshore wind contract worth €13 billion. Holding company files for administration in the UK. Petrofac delisted from the London Stock Exchange
November 2025
180 Petrofac employees laid off in the UAE
Islamophobia definition
A widely accepted definition was made by the All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims in 2019: “Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.” It further defines it as “inciting hatred or violence against Muslims”.
Labour dispute
The insured employee may still file an ILOE claim even if a labour dispute is ongoing post termination, but the insurer may suspend or reject payment, until the courts resolve the dispute, especially if the reason for termination is contested. The outcome of the labour court proceedings can directly affect eligibility.
- Abdullah Ishnaneh, Partner, BSA Law
The finalists
Player of the Century, 2001-2020: Cristiano Ronaldo (Juventus), Lionel Messi (Barcelona), Mohamed Salah (Liverpool), Ronaldinho
Coach of the Century, 2001-2020: Pep Guardiola (Manchester City), Jose Mourinho (Tottenham Hotspur), Zinedine Zidane (Real Madrid), Sir Alex Ferguson
Club of the Century, 2001-2020: Al Ahly (Egypt), Bayern Munich (Germany), Barcelona (Spain), Real Madrid (Spain)
Player of the Year: Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Robert Lewandowski (Bayern Munich)
Club of the Year: Bayern Munich, Liverpool, Real Madrid
Coach of the Year: Gian Piero Gasperini (Atalanta), Hans-Dieter Flick (Bayern Munich), Jurgen Klopp (Liverpool)
Agent of the Century, 2001-2020: Giovanni Branchini, Jorge Mendes, Mino Raiola
The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
In-demand jobs and monthly salaries
- Technology expert in robotics and automation: Dh20,000 to Dh40,000
- Energy engineer: Dh25,000 to Dh30,000
- Production engineer: Dh30,000 to Dh40,000
- Data-driven supply chain management professional: Dh30,000 to Dh50,000
- HR leader: Dh40,000 to Dh60,000
- Engineering leader: Dh30,000 to Dh55,000
- Project manager: Dh55,000 to Dh65,000
- Senior reservoir engineer: Dh40,000 to Dh55,000
- Senior drilling engineer: Dh38,000 to Dh46,000
- Senior process engineer: Dh28,000 to Dh38,000
- Senior maintenance engineer: Dh22,000 to Dh34,000
- Field engineer: Dh6,500 to Dh7,500
- Field supervisor: Dh9,000 to Dh12,000
- Field operator: Dh5,000 to Dh7,000
Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week
Real estate tokenisation project
Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.
The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.
Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.
Fire and Fury
By Michael Wolff,
Henry Holt
White hydrogen: Naturally occurring hydrogen
Chromite: Hard, metallic mineral containing iron oxide and chromium oxide
Ultramafic rocks: Dark-coloured rocks rich in magnesium or iron with very low silica content
Ophiolite: A section of the earth’s crust, which is oceanic in nature that has since been uplifted and exposed on land
Olivine: A commonly occurring magnesium iron silicate mineral that derives its name for its olive-green yellow-green colour
Griselda
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