Tesla lays off employees, Ideal recalls some of its employees! Which positions are the most popular in the second half of automotive intelligence?

Recently, at the 2024 China Automotive Chongqing Forum , Zeng Qinghong, Party Secretary and Chairman of GAC Group, said: "Long-termism is a pattern and a manifestation of vision for enterprises. It can help enterprises reject zero-sum games in the process of continuous innovation and value creation. Due to the internal circulation of the automotive industry, layoffs are now rampant, and GAC has also laid off a lot of people. Without money to make and without benefits, enterprises cannot survive."

According to incomplete statistics from electronic enthusiasts, as many as 6 automotive-related companies have laid off employees in the past two months.

Figure: Compiled by Electronics Enthusiasts based on public information

This long list includes Ideal Auto, Tesla , FAW-Volkswagen, Great Wall Motors, GAC Honda and Germany's Bosch . With the fierce competition in the auto market, a wave of "layoffs" has been set off in the auto market. Among them, Tesla announced that it would lay off more than 10% of its employees worldwide, about 14,000 people, and the layoff rate of some departments of Tesla China exceeded 30%. In terms of new car-making forces, Ideal Auto was also recently exposed to be conducting large-scale personnel optimization, with an overall ratio of more than 18%, which means that nearly 6,000 people are facing unemployment. GAC Honda plans to lay off 1,700 full-time employees due to declining performance.

In the current automobile market, new energy car companies are laying off employees, joint venture car companies are laying off employees, and fuel car companies are also laying off employees. What trend does the layoffs reveal about the current competition among car companies? This year, the automobile industry has been in frequent price wars, and there has been a phenomenon of increasing volume without increasing volume. These pressures have been transmitted to the upstream industrial chain, bringing about what obvious changes? Domestic automobile manufacturers have also seen the phenomenon of "laying off employees while recruiting people". What changes does this reflect in the talent structure of the current automobile industry? What are the popular positions in the automobile industry? Electronic enthusiasts interviewed professional headhunters and industry veterans to analyze for everyone.

Frequent layoffs in the automobile industry, reducing costs and increasing efficiency and giving investors confidence are fundamental.

Since April, many automobile companies have released their first quarter financial reports. According to the published situation, Tesla, the leading company in the global new energy automobile industry, had a total revenue of US$21.301 billion in the first quarter, a year-on-year decrease of 9%, of which the revenue of the automobile business was US$17.378 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 13%. The gross profit was US$3.696 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 18%.

Musk said in an internal email to employees that after a thorough review, he made a difficult decision to reduce the number of employees worldwide by more than 10%. He said this would keep the company lean, innovative and enter the next growth cycle. Western media quoted industry insiders as saying that Tesla's layoffs were in response to the problems caused by declining sales and the intensified price war of electric vehicles.

Tesla has not made many changes in its models in recent years. Taking its sales-leading Model 3 and Model Y as examples, the two products were delivered in 2017 and 2020 respectively. However, over the years, the interior and appearance of the two products have not been changed much, and the hardware configuration upgrades are not obvious compared with other companies' competing products. In addition, the domestic automobile industry is highly competitive, and the flagship models launched by many car manufacturers such as BYD, Wenjie, and Ideal have had some direct impact on Tesla's sales. According to the latest statistics from Trendforce, in the first quarter of 2024, in the global pure electric vehicle (BEV) sector, Tesla won the championship with a market share of 21.5%, and BYD (excluding Denza) ranked second with a market share of 16.6%. But in terms of annual growth rate, Tesla is -8.5% and BYD is 13.3%.

As a new domestic car-making force, Ideal Auto also ushered in unsatisfactory performance disclosure in the first quarter. In the first quarter of 2024, the company achieved revenue of 25.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 36.4% and a month-on-month decrease of 38.6%; net profit was 591 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 36.7% and a month-on-month decrease of 89.7%

. In 2023, Ideal's revenue was about 123.9 billion yuan, becoming China's first new car-making force with annual revenue of over 100 billion yuan, but it "turned over" in the first quarter of 2024. Ideal launched a large-scale layoff on May 22. According to reports, the overall optimization rate of Ideal Auto exceeded 18%, and it is expected to involve more than 5,600 employees. Among them, the sales service operation department optimized more than 400 people, the recruitment department was reduced from more than 200 people to 40 to 50 people, and the intelligent driving team will be reduced to less than 1,000 people.

In response to the frequent layoffs in the automotive industry, headhunter Eric said that after the release of the first quarter financial report of 2024, Ideal Auto and Tesla laid off employees, mainly because the capital market was not optimistic about future growth. In the case of uncertain future growth expectations, layoffs are also a way to reduce costs and give investors more confidence.

On the evening of June 4, less than a month after launching large-scale layoffs, Ideal recalled some laid-off employees in key positions. At present, laid-off employees on the test side have been notified of recall. Previously, the negotiated compensation had not yet been paid, and this part of the compensation will not be provided to the recalled personnel in the future, and the contracts of the employees involved will be directly continued.

Economist Yu Fenghui told the media that Ideal Auto has encountered a series of challenges recently. The recall of key employees may be to respond to changes in the market environment and adjustments to product strategies. By adjusting the internal structure to adapt to market changes.

The price war of automobiles has been repeated, forcing enterprises to recruit scarce talents for " intelligentization " and establish differentiated competitive advantages. Recently, the price war in the Chinese automobile market has intensified. Luxury car brands and joint venture brands have also begun to compete with Chinese manufacturers by using the strategy of exchanging price for volume in the short term. A BMW salesperson pointed out that many fuel vehicles and new energy vehicles currently have different degrees of discounts. BMW i3 can enjoy a discount of about 150,000 yuan, with a bare car price of 205,000 yuan, and a fuel vehicle discount of about 100,000 yuan. Cui Dongshu, secretary-general of the China Passenger Car Association, told the media that the scale of vehicle price reduction in the Chinese market in the first five months of this year exceeded 90% of last year, and even exceeded the year before. From February to April, the number of car models that were reduced in price reached 29, 49 and 54 respectively. Under the continuous competition in automobile prices, the profit margin of the automobile industry has accelerated its decline. According to statistics from the China Passenger Car Association, the profit margin of the Chinese automobile industry in the first four months of this year was only 4.6%, lower than the average profit margin of 5% of industrial enterprises.

How to maximize profits at the most appropriate cost? In addition to layoffs, establishing differentiated competitive advantages is a problem that many car companies must face at present. In addition to layoffs , we saw Tesla recalling its supercharging team. On May 23, Tesla's recruitment page listed 17 vacancies in the "Autopilot and Robotics" department in the San Francisco area, mainly engineering positions for Tesla's driving assistance system, but two were artificial intelligence research positions . There is also a recall of some key position talents by Ideal Auto. Overall, the changes in the employee structure of the above companies show that while reducing production personnel, they are also significantly expanding technical personnel.

Headhunter Eric told Electronics Enthusiasts that the new energy vehicle field is a hot spot for recruitment, especially for technical positions, such as positions related to vehicle software development, FSD , algorithms , etc.

It is reported that the "2023 New Energy Vehicle Talent Development Report" jointly released by the China Institute of Information and Communications Technology, Zhaopin.com and the China Electric Vehicle Hundred People's Association shows that from the perspective of salary growth, vehicle software development positions not only top the high-paying list, but also become the hottest positions with the fastest income growth rate. From 2022 to 2023, the monthly salary increase for recruitment reached 18%, among which the increase in private car companies was the largest at 21%, far exceeding the industry average. The increase was slightly lower in new car-making forces and state-owned car companies, but also reached 19% and 8% respectively.

Among the popular positions in the automotive industry on the Zhipin Boss website, we saw that as many as a dozen companies were recruiting for in-vehicle software engineer positions, offering monthly salaries ranging from 18K to 40K, and annual salaries of 13 and 15 salaries. Intelligent driving system engineers and embedded software development have become the two most popular sub-positions under the in-vehicle software R&D positions.

This coincides with the current trend of software-defined cars and accelerated intelligence of cars, especially as smart cockpits and smart driving accelerate the penetration of new energy vehicles, which puts higher requirements on the software and hardware development capabilities of automobile companies. Taking NOA pre-installed as an example, the market share of NOA pre-installed standard configuration has ushered in rapid development. From January to March 2024, domestic cars have steadily jumped from a negligible 1% in 2022 to 5.07%, achieving a growth rate of 147.95% compared with the same period last year.

Headhunter Eric pointed out that BYD began to recruit intelligent driving personnel on a large scale from the end of 2023. Making up for this shortcoming is also considering that intelligent driving has become a vane in the automotive industry. In August last year, BYD successfully hired Xu Lingyun, the former director of HiPhi intelligent driving, who joined the Electronic Integration Department of the Planning Institute. This move clearly shows BYD's persistence in independently developing advanced intelligent driving algorithms. In addition, BYD recruited Zhang Licun, who was the director of autonomous driving at Volvo Cars. He leads the Intelligent Network Connection Center of the Planning Institute and is responsible for intelligent driving innovation business. Last June, Zhou Yan, the director of Zheku, a former OPPO chip subsidiary, joined the Embedded Product Center of the Sixth Division. According to people familiar with the matter, BYD's intelligent driving business is mainly handed over to the Planning Institute and the Fifth Division. The size of the relevant team is currently close to 2,000 people.

Summary

Eric, a headhunter, believes that there are three major trends in new energy vehicles this year that deserve attention. First, the integrated cockpit chip. Now most domestic companies' intelligent cockpits and autonomous driving chips are developed separately. Qualcomm has demonstrated the integrated cockpit chip at the Beijing Auto Show, and Horizon has also started a project for development; second, solid-state batteries. BYD and SAIC have both entered the research and development of solid-state batteries. It is expected that batteries with a range of more than 1,000 kilometers will appear in the future. Third, to popularize 800V super fast charging, charging piles require the third generation of semiconductors , silicon carbide, and the largest application of silicon carbide is fast charging in cars. From the perspective of integrated cockpit chips, whoever has a higher cost-effective chip can win new customers.

The automotive industry is changing from volume price to volume value. Automotive companies must establish their own unique advantages in the fields of intelligent driving chips, in-vehicle software and algorithms to win new market share. In the first quarter of 2024, the sales volume of the car industry increased by 6 times, indicating that the support brought by Huawei's intelligent driving to the car industry has been recognized by the market. Although layoffs are one of the ways for automotive companies to reduce costs and increase efficiency, it is more important for companies to establish new advantages in future competition, so the changes in the structure of hot recruitment of talents in the automotive industry reflect this change. We will wait and see how the future will develop.