DOGE Employee Cuts Fall Heavily On Agency That Regulates Musk’s Tesla

A small government team regulating the sort of autonomous cars that Elon Musk says represent the future of Tesla, his car company, is getting cut nearly in half by the Musk-led U.S. Doge Service, according to people briefed on the reductions.

The loss of personnel from the specialized unit is part of a 10 percent overall workforce reduction at the federal agency tasked with ensuring safety on America’s roads. In all, the agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, will lose between 70 and 80 people, split roughly evenly between firings of probationary employees and buyouts, according to three people, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution.

The losses touch on many aspects of the agency’s safety work, according to fired workers who also spoke with the The Washington Post: an engineer who worked with crash test dummies, employees who work with states on safety grant funding, and a research psychologist focused on drunken driving and speeding.

“It was just very jarring to go from saving lives one day to being locked out of your computer the next,” said one terminated employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid hurting his prospects of finding a new job.