Tesla closing a dozen or more former Solar City installation centers in layoffs

The layoffs recently announced for Tesla is especially focusing on residential sales through what had been Solar City outposts in Home Depot stores. Solar City had famously sold its systems through both direct sales and through sales partners stationed in Home Depot stores. According to reports, Tesla will close about a dozen installation facilities as part of this round of layoffs.

Reuters posted a report on Thursday citing internal company documents and interviews with several Tesla employees. It said that Tesla will close a dozen installation facilities, and end its relationship with Home Depot. That is consistent with an earlier internal letter published by Bloomberg News saying that some former Solar City operations will be closing.

According to an internal company list reviewed by Reuters, 60 installation facilities will remain open, and that either 13 or 14 facilities will close. While Solar City and Tesla are based in the SF Bay Area, the solar installation business had installation centers scattered around the country.

Tesla spokespeople told Reuters reporters that the level of cuts – by number of employees – in the Tesla Energy business (formerly Solar City) were to be in line with cuts in the automotive business. Therefore Tesla would have us to think that cuts were applied evenly across the board, and did not focus on specific business units, and that Tesla is not therefore scaling back on certain businesses.

Reuters says the internal letter listed locations for closure in California, Maryland, New Jersey, Texas, New York, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Arizona and Delaware. Some personnel at closed sites are being transferred to other sites. Therefore it is difficult, according to Reuters, to determine whats the extent of of job cuts in solar sales at Tesla versus other areas of the business.

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About David Herron

David Herron is a writer and software engineer living in Silicon Valley. He primarily writes about electric vehicles, clean energy systems, climate change, peak oil and related issues. When not writing he indulges in software projects and is sometimes employed as a software engineer. David has written for sites like PlugInCars and TorqueNews, and worked for companies like Sun Microsystems and Yahoo.