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Audi and BMW employees face job cuts, reduced bonuses amid scramble towards EVs
German automakers Audi and BMW are facing painful cutbacks as each company attempts to accelerate its efforts towards electromobility. Based on recent reports, Audi will be engaging in drastic job cuts that would reduce its manpower in Germany by the thousands while BMW will be engaging in cost-cutting measures that would affect the compensation of its employees.
In a recent report, German news agency tagesschau.de revealed that Audi will be cutting 9,500 of 61,000 jobs in the country. In place of the employees who would be facing job cuts, Audi is planning on hiring 2,000 electric mobility specialists instead. The job cuts, as well as the hiring of the 2,000 e-mobility specialists, are expected to be completed by 2025.
Part of the reason behind these drastic cuts is the sheer under-utilization of Audi’s facilities. According to the German news agency, the 61,000 employees at the two German plants in Ingolstadt and Neckarsulm are largely under-utilized. The Neckarsulm facility, for example, has a capacity of 300,000 cars annually, but its current output is far less, partly due to the region’s shift away from the internal combustion engine.
Outgoing CEO Bram Schot explained the job cuts in a statement to the German publication. “In times of upheaval, we are making Audi more agile and efficient, increasing productivity and strengthening the competitiveness of our German operations in the long term,” he said.
In a way, a notable part of Audi’s struggles lies in the auto industry’s shift towards electric mobility. This is something that is also being felt by fellow German automaker BMW, which recently announced that it will be adopting some painful cost-cutting measures as well.
According to a Bloomberg report, BMW will be reducing bonus payments for employees in Germany. The veteran carmaker noted that this was done to avoid drastic measures such as those being adopted by Audi. This was explained at a staff meeting in Munich on Wednesday by new BMW CEO Oliver Zipse. “Together with the works council, we have reached a common solution. This allows us to avoid drastic measures that others are taking to reduce their costs,” he said.
It should be noted that BMW’s cuts to its German employees are only part of the veteran automaker’s plan to save over 12 billion euros ($13 billion). These savings will then be used as additional funds to developing new vehicle technologies, one of which is the rollout of the company’s all-electric vehicles. BMW has some catching up to do on this front, as the company’s battery-electric cars are still headlined by a vehicle that is long in the tooth: the BMW i3, which was released back in 2013.
Between the two companies, Audi is ahead considering that it has already released the e-tron, a fully-electric SUV, to the market. That being said the e-tron suffers from poor range and efficiency, with the vehicle only receiving a 204-mile EPA rating despite its 95 kWh battery. BMW, on the other hand, has vehicles like the i4 and the iX3 on the way, though the vehicles are not yet in production.
The Tesla Semi is entering a new Pilot Program with Paper Transport, LLC (PTI), a Wisconsin-based transportation provider. The company will test the Semi’s Long Range configuration through “dedicated operations within the Chicago market.”
Chicago presents an interesting challenge for the Semi, as it will be a colder-weather climate that will test the Semi’s ability to operate in lower temperatures and in potentially large accumulations of snow. This is something Tesla has been testing with the Semi in Alaska and even in Northern California during the colder months, but Chicago will present a truly tough midwestern winter.
Tesla Semi spotted on journey home after winter performance testing
PTI says it is using the Semi to evaluate its strategy of reducing transportation emissions while maintaining performance, reliability, and cost efficiency. These are major arguments for the Semi being introduced into new fleets.
CEO of PTI Tyler Ellison said:
“PTI has been a leader in sustainable transportation solutions for over 15 years. We take a consultative approach to helping customers identify and implement the right transportation solution for their network. Our partnership with Tesla expands our portfolio alongside renewable natural gas and intermodal, giving customers more ways to reduce Scope 3 emissions without compromising service or economics.”
PTI is far from the first company to adopt the Semi within a fleet, as Tesla entered strategic agreements with PepsiCo. and its subsidiary Frito-Lay for a Pilot Program that extended throughout the California region.
Tesla has let companies like those utilize the Semi to determine whether it would be suitable for their operations. Additionally, Tesla gets valuable information regarding the Semi’s performance, knowing what to improve and what is ideal for companies that will utilize the all-electric truck for regional and nationwide logistics.
PTI plans to utilize the Long Range configuration, which is priced at $290,000 and features a range of approximately 500 miles, a three-motor powertrain, up to 800 kW of drive power, and consumption of just 1.7 kWh per mile.
Tesla Semi pricing revealed after company uncovers trim levels
VP of Maintenance at PTI, Bryan Ellen, added:
“We are excited to partner with Tesla, leveraging their ever-evolving technology. We are bullish in our estimation of the parallels available between our dedicated model and the efficiency of their fully electric Class 8 tractor. We anticipate a growing synergy between our businesses as we work to facilitate this sustainable solution for our customers.”
PTI has logged more than 87 million miles using sources like compressed and renewable gas, but now is looking to take it a step further with fully electric operations.
Tesla revealed on Monday that it is building a new autonomous vehicle at Gigafactory Texas, its plant just outside of the City of Austin. This particular vehicle will be geared toward those who are in need of a wheelchair-accessible car that would require no human driver for operation.
According to a new report from Wired, Tesla’s Senior Policy Advisor, India Herdman, told members of the Washington D.C. City Council on Monday:
“We are in development for a purpose-built, wheelchair-accessible autonomous vehicle. We know that paratransit can be very difficult, and people who are confined to wheelchairs permanently should still be able to move around freely, so that is an active product being built by Tesla in Texas.”
This builds upon what CEO Elon Musk said last year on X, which confirmed the company was working on accessible rides within its Robotaxi platform, which currently is confined to the Model Y.
Absolutely
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 19, 2025
Tesla is also developing the Cybercab, which started employee rides last week. However, this vehicle is not necessarily geared toward wheelchair accessibility.
That leaves a major gap in the autonomous ride-sharing program that Tesla is attempting to build; the company has been pretty clear that it does not want to complicate its manufacturing lines by bringing in a wide array of body styles.
However, it seems necessary to have something larger that could help transport people to appointments when they cannot drive. For wheelchair accessibility, the Robovan, which was unveiled at the “We, Robot” event in October 2024, seems to be the most ideal solution:
Herdman did not indicate whether she was referring to the Robovan or if Tesla is building yet another body style that is geared toward full autonomy but also caters to the handicapped.
Tesla might need to develop something specifically for the handicapped in order to align with the Americans with Disabilities Act, which prevents discrimination against people with disabilities in transportation services. Uber was hit with a lawsuit late last year for “refusing to reasonably modify its policies, practices, or procedures where necessary to avoid discriminating against riders with disabilities.”
Tesla would obviously like to avoid this.
It will be interesting to see what Tesla will do with this project, and whether it will introduce something new to the market or just continue with the Robovan.
Tesla weirdly confirmed that its steering wheel-less and pedal-less Cybercab vehicle is now in the process of giving employees rides, a huge milestone for the vehicle program.
But the entire thing was super strange. On Friday, Tesla released a video stating that there was “Cool news from Giga Texas” and that employees were now taking rides in Cybercabs that have no manual controls. The units seen on public roads are engineering vehicles that have manual controls inside, a necessity as Tesla moved through the testing phase.
However, Tesla removed the video and reposted it shortly after with a more vague title. It seems like the employee rides are still going, but the video was adjusted slightly. The initial upload showed employees doing things like watching movies and adjusting the climate, but these snippets were removed in the second upload.
Cool news from Giga Texas pic.twitter.com/gvbG456Tzw
— Tesla Robotaxi (@robotaxi) July 11, 2026
Both images below were uploaded with the first video, but were removed after Tesla re-uploaded the announcement. These are not available in the second upload
Credit: Tesla
Credit: Tesla
Nevertheless, the announcement from Tesla is that the Cybercab is operating with employees inside who can control the vehicle’s audio, video, climate, and destination settings through their smartphone app.
Tesla has already been testing Cybercab engineering units, but last month, it was able to self-certify for SAE Level 4, which would enable unsupervised self-driving in Texas. The company is moving toward that, and the plans have always been to launch Cybercab rides this year.
The Cybercab is potentially looked at as the next generation of Tesla’s mobility leg. For the past 15 years, the company has been known as somewhat of an automaker, among many other things. However, these passenger vehicles that Tesla has manufactured are now moving into a new realm, as they will eventually drive themselves with no supervision thanks to the Full Self-Driving suite.
The Cybercab is just the next step of that: a true vehicle developed for the sole purpose of ride-hailing. It has no human controls, it has only two seats, and it will get passengers from Point A to Point B with no awkward driver, no need for manual inputs, and with no stress.
Tesla is moving forward with other developments related to the Cybercab project as well. However, the big announcement will come when Tesla finally announces that it is launching Cybercab rides to the general public, something that it plans to launch either late this year or early 2027.
Tesla Semi enters new Pilot Program with interesting challenge
Tesla is building a wheelchair-accessible Robotaxi
