We're hearing that approximately 90 Tesla employees, or 90% of the Detroit office, was simply let go, and the remaining employees have to make their way to the San Carlos headquarters with no moving costs covered, no increase in salary and no help getting rid of their old homes. Fortunately, the real estate market in Detroit is red-hot, and the cost of living is about the same in San Carlos.... right?

The relevant section from the Tesla pink slip blog-post-of-death below:

There will also be some headcount reduction due to consolidation of operations. In anticipation of moving vehicle engineering to our new HQ in San Carlos, we are ramping down and will close our Rochester Hills office near Detroit. Good communication, tightly knit engineering and a common company culture are of paramount importance as Tesla grows.

That's right folks, "good communication" is key.

[Photo: James Nielsen/Getty Images]

Tesla is absolutely committed to development of our next generation vehicle, to be unveiled early next year. However, we are going to reduce activity on detailed production engineering, tooling and commitments to suppliers until our Department of Energy loan guarantee becomes effective.

Our translation below the jump.

If they cut back on production engineering, tooling and commitments to suppliers, they are essentially saying they'll show off their prototype but will make no more production plans until they get a federal loan guarantee for their plant in San Jose. This, like everything, is being blamed on the Financiapocalypse.

This actually follows up on some news we heard way back in January that the Whitestar/Model S was toast, despite having seen the Model S mule. Look for a prototype soon and, depending on the market, a production car at some point in the future... maybe. For more on the Valley implications of this check out Valleywag's coverage

[Souce: Tesla Motors]