One month after Tesla lost its head of business development who wished to “spend more time with his family”, and just weeks after the EV company’s veteran battery technology director also unexpectedly quit amid a growing senior management exodus (full list at the bottom of this article), Tesla decided to even out the ranks on the bottom as well, and fired “hundreds of workers” this week, including engineers, managers and factory workers even as the company struggles to expand its manufacturing and product line, according to the Mercury News which first reported of the mass layoffs.

Workers estimated between 400 and 700 employees have been fired, although Tesla refused to say how many employees were let go, and added that it expects employee turnover to be similar to last year’s attrition. Tesla employs about 10,000 workers at its Fremont factory; it lost $336 million in the second quarter, and burned through a record $1.16 billion in cash in Q2, or $13 million per day.

In September, Tesla announced it was cutting 63 positions at SolarCity Corp.’s Roseville, California office; the staff was dismissed after Tesla bought the company, which manufacturers and installs rooftop solar panels, for about $2 billion in 2016. SolarCity had over 12,200 employees as of the end of 2016.

The dismissals come at a critical point for the company, which is scrambling to increase vehicle production fivefold and reach a broader market with its new Model 3 sedan. The electric vehicle maker missed targets for producing the lower-cost sedan, manufacturing only 260 last quarter despite a wait list of more than 450,000 customers. It was later revealed by the WSJ that Tesla’s “dirty secret” for the unexpected production problem is that it was banging out parts of the Model 3 by hand.

According to the Mercury News, this week’s dismissals have not been reported to the state Employment Development Department, a spokeswoman said. The state generally requires companies to report layoffs of more than 50 employees in a 30-day period. Tesla countered that the performance-based departures were not considered layoffs and not subject to state notifications.

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