Tesla CEO: "Extraordinary times require focus"
Elon Musk, the Tesla Motors investor who has freshly installed himself as the electric automaker's CEO, has explained his management coup and the company's pending layoffs in a blog post. Tesla's $47 million engineering center outside Detroit, near the automotive industry's biggest pool of technical brains? Gone. Tesla's much-anticipated Model S sedan? Delayed until the middle of 2011, at best; the company is ceasing all real activity that would lead to a car getting built. The $109,000 Roadsters customers have ordered? "I personally stand behind delivering a product that you will love," writes Musk. Musk has not yet enumerated how many of Tesla's employees will lose their jobs.