the staff cuts and restructuring in the new ev industry reflect challenges common to all automakers and some that are unique to small companies in a capitalintensive industry where even global economies of scale sometimes are not enough to assure profitability when tesla ceo elon musk last month told top executives in his company in an email that he had a super bad feeling about the economy and said the worlds most valuable automaker needed to cut its salaried staff by 10 he was amplifying concern about the global economy other ceos shared this is an incredibly tough business said barry engle a former auto executive who started a specialpurpose acquisition company that merged with air taxi startup lilium with the success of tesla its easy to forget that was a story that was 20 years in the making and along the way there were many points where they stared death in the face in teslas case economic turbulence struck as the company was launching large assembly plants in texas and germany supply chain bottlenecks had turned those operations into money furnaces musk told members of a tesla fan club last month detroit not immune detroit automakers are at risk too from rising money costs and persistent supplychain problems at general motors co executives look at a dashboard of market indicators every day every week every month chief financial officer paul jacobson told investors at deutsche bank conference in june i dont want to end up in a situation where we walk off a cliff so far established automakers have been able to raise prices on their popular highvolume combustion trucks and suvs to keep cash flowing gm ford and stellantis have so far stuck to their fullyear profit forecasts ev startups do not have established model lines churning out cash the way the ford fseries truck lineup does the slumping stock market and rising interest rates have made it tougher for new companies to raise fresh capital from investors that intensifies pressure to start building and selling vehicles and to slash expenses to conserve cash on hand canoo inc shares got recharged on tuesday when the company said it had landed the deal to deliver 4500 delivery vans to retailer walmart canoo shares rose more than 50 although from a low base the company told investors in may its management had substantial doubt about the companys ability to remain a going concern reuters published on jul 14 2022 at 0742 am ist telegram facebook copy link be the first one to comment comment now comments comment now read comment 1 all comments post post find this comment offensive choose your reason below and click on the submit button this will alert our moderators to take actions reasons for reporting foul language defamatory inciting hatred against a certain community out of context spam others report join the community of 2m industry professionals subscribe to our newsletter to get latest insights analysis download etauto app get realtime updates save