First Mode says it’s cutting back on its workforce as it adjusts to the market demand for heavy trucks that rely less on fossil fuels.
The workforce in the U.S., which currently amounts to about 240 people, is being immediately reduced by about 20%, First Mode CEO Julian Soles said in an email sent to employees today. Most of those employees are in Washington state — for example, at First Mode’s Seattle HQ and at its proving grounds in Centralia, Wash.
About 125 additional employees work in non-U.S. offices. Soles said operations in Australia, Britain and South Africa “may also possibly experience redundancies,” while operations in Chile are “not currently impacted.”
Despite the cutbacks, First Mode is continuing with plans to retrofit mining trucks to reduce their carbon footprint and address the climate challenge. “This is the year that we deliver commercial products to our customer sites. It is also when we finalise our transformation from an engineering services firm to a global decarbonisation product company,” Soles wrote, using British spellings.
