Elon Musk says Tesla planning 'thorough reorganization'

Tesla's chief executive, Elon Musk, told employees on Monday the company was undergoing a "thorough reorganization" as it contends with questions over its production schedule and two crashes involving its electric self-driving cars. Musk said in an email that as part of the reorganization the company was "flattening the management structure to improve communication, combining functions where sensible and trimming activities that are not vital to the success of our mission". Tesla confirmed the veracity of the email, which was disclosed by the Wall Street Journal. On a 2 May earnings call, Musk said the company was "going to conduct sort of a reorganization restructuring of the company … this month and make sure we're well set up to achieve that goal". He added: "The number of sort of third-party contracting companies that we're using has really gotten out of control, so we're going to scrub the barnacles on that front. You've got barnacles on barnacles. So there's going to be a lot of barnacle removal."