From $120K Paycheck to Parking Lot: How a Fired Tesla Employee Turned His Car Into a Rent-Free Home for Two Years

Imagine losing a six-figure job on your way to work — badge beeping red at the turnstile, no warning, no goodbye. Now imagine selling your $1.2 million house a few weeks later and moving, permanently, into your car. That’s not a hypothetical. That’s Nico Murillo’s actual life, and two years later, he’s still living it — by choice, and happily.

Murillo isn’t some random EV owner who fell on hard times. He was a Tesla production supervisor at the Fremont factory (California, United States), the man overseeing the very assembly lines that built the cars he’d eventually call home. His story is equal parts cautionary tale, financial experiment, and full-blown lifestyle experiment — exactly the kind of plot twist that makes you stop scrolling.

Who Is Nico Murillo, the Ex-Tesla Employee Who Chose Car Life?

Murillo joined Tesla in 2019, right in the thick of what Elon Musk famously called “production hell” — the chaotic scramble to ramp up Model 3 output. Over five years, he climbed from entry-level production associate to production supervisor, eventually overseeing teams on the same line he’d started on. By 2024, he was earning around $120,000 a year.

Then, on April 15, 2024, everything changed. Murillo was already on his way to work when he got an email saying his position had been eliminated. In disbelief, he showed up anyway — only for his badge to flash red at the turnstile, confirming what the email already had. He was one of roughly 14,000 employees Tesla laid off starting that April, about 10% of its global workforce.

Why Was a Tesla Supervisor Already Sleeping in His Car Before Getting Laid Off?

Here’s the twist that makes Murillo’s story stranger than fiction: he’d already been living out of his car for stretches — even while still employed. Commuting from Lathrop in California’s Central Valley to Fremont meant a brutal three-hour round trip. So through much of 2023, instead of driving home after long shifts, Murillo would sleep in the back of his car during the workweek, reheating meals in the break-room microwave and showering at the factory gym.

In other words, car-dwelling wasn’t a desperate reaction to unemployment — it was a habit he’d already normalized out of sheer commuting exhaustion, long before the layoff turned it into a full-time lifestyle.

What Happened After Nico Murillo Was Laid Off From Tesla?

Losing his job meant losing the income that supported a $1.2 million home he’d bought with his family. Rather than scramble for a new job or downsize into a rental, Murillo made a far bolder call: he sold the house in May 2024 and decided not to rent or buy again at all. Instead, he moved into his Tesla full-time and started documenting the entire journey on YouTube.

It’s a decision that sounds impulsive on paper but reads, in hindsight, like a calculated pivot. Murillo had spent five years watching Tesla’s obsession with efficiency and problem-solving from the inside. He simply turned that same lens on his own life.

Which Tesla Does Nico Murillo Actually Live In?

Murillo’s car-living content began around a Tesla Model Y, but his more recent videos center on a Tesla Model X as his main home base — and it’s a smart upgrade. The Model X is Tesla’s largest passenger vehicle aside from the Cybertruck, with seven seats and a cabin that opens up dramatically once the rear seats fold flat. Unlike the Cybertruck’s tight truck bed — which Murillo has likened to sleeping in a coffin — the Model X offers enough room to actually stretch out.

He’s also leaned on one of Tesla’s more underrated features for this lifestyle: Camp Mode, a built-in setting that keeps the cabin’s temperature, airflow, and power outlets running overnight, effectively turning the car into a climate-controlled bedroom without draining the battery dangerously. During extreme heat — he’s documented conditions hitting 100°F — he’s even split time between two Teslas to manage airflow and battery load more comfortably.

How Does Nico Murillo Handle Showers, Parking, and Daily Life?

This is usually the first question people ask, and fairly so. Murillo has built an entire rotating system around it:

• Showers and bathrooms: 24-hour gym memberships, which double as a daily freshen-up spot.
• Overnight parking: A mix of quiet residential streets, 24-hour gym parking lots, truck stops, and highway rest stops.
• Sleep setup: A custom platform, built largely with Home Depot materials, paired with a mattress that turns the trunk into a proper sleeping area.

It’s less “living rough” and more engineered minimalism — which tracks for someone who spent five years solving operational problems on an assembly line for a living.

How Much Money Has Nico Murillo Actually Saved Living in His Tesla?

This is the number that stops people mid-scroll. By eliminating rent, electricity, gas, water, garbage collection, and even his car note in one of America’s most expensive housing markets, Murillo says he’s now saving roughly $1,500 a month — a figure he’s shared directly in his own videos, and that’s before counting any YouTube income.

Stretch that over two full years, and the math is hard to ignore: tens of thousands of dollars redirected from a landlord’s pocket straight into savings, all while living in a vehicle he already owned outright.

Is Nico Murillo’s Story Part of a Bigger Car-Living Trend?

Murillo isn’t operating in isolation. Car and van living has quietly become one of the more visible offshoots of the “tiny house” movement, fueled by unaffordable rents, remote-work flexibility, and a YouTube ecosystem that’s stripped away much of the stigma once attached to it. What makes Murillo’s version stand out is the irony baked into it: a man laid off by an EV maker, living inside the very product he used to help build, documenting it for an audience that can’t look away.

He’s since set his sights on a bigger goal — financial independence by 2029 — treating his Tesla not as a fallback, but as a launchpad.

The Bigger Picture: A Layoff That Became a Lifestyle

What began as a devastating professional blow has, in Murillo’s telling, turned into something closer to freedom. No rent. No mortgage. No fixed address. Just a battery pack, a folded-down back seat, and a plan to travel while he rebuilds his finances from scratch.

Whether you see it as inspiring, extreme, or simply a sign of how unaffordable housing has become, one thing is certain: Nico Murillo turned a pink slip into one of the more compelling EV stories on the internet — and he’s still writing it, one parking lot at a time.

Image credit: Images used in this article are taken from the Youtube video of Nico Murillo.

---