Bounced emails. Stalled projects. Delayed adapters. These are the immediate effects of Tesla CEO Elon Musk's “ultra tough” approach to cutting costs, which has resulted in at least 500 layoffs from the company's Supercharger business, including the division's top executive, Rebecca Tinucci.
The timing couldn't have been worse. Tesla was on the verge of making its vehicle charging plug the de facto standard in North America, and its competitors and stakeholders are counting on a smooth ride. But Musk says the smaller team will focus less on rolling out new Supercharger locations and will instead focus on “100 percent uptime.” It's unclear how this will translate into reality, and laid-off employees say Inside electric vehicles that reduced workforce will impact their ability to respond to outages.
Emails to contacts in Tesla's charging division have been recovered
Just weeks earlier, Tesla was touting its Supercharger advancements in quarterly filings with the SEC. In the document, the company said it planned to increase its charging infrastructure equipment to expand the network to support electric vehicles from other manufacturers. Tesla had also accepted $17 million in federal grants for electric vehicle charging before eviscerating the Supercharger team.
In reality, Tesla is doing the opposite of expanding its network. Sources said electrek that Tesla canceled four Supercharger locations in the New York area, backing out of leases, lending credence to Musk's prediction of slower installations. Meanwhile, emails have been recovered to contacts in Tesla's charging division, a contractor working on the company's charging station facilities. said E&E News. As the contractor headed to a site in Dallas, Tesla's construction leader called to report that the entire team had been laid off.
Elsewhere, projects to install Tesla's slower Level 2 destination chargers in apartment complexes have also been affected. A condo owner named Don Burke posted on x that his building was twitter.com/doyendon/status/1785750284314030397″>in the middle of installing four chargers when the project stalled. Burke said his emails to Tesla employees have been recovered and there is no indication there is anyone left at the company who can help.
On Reddit, a commenter posted that his $7,000 project is also in limbo since Tesla needs to fix the software, but no one responds. Another contractor recounted how his construction project a 43 charging station has been canceled after his contact at Tesla said the entire team was laid off.
Tesla also has a large contract with Hilton to install up to 20,000 chargers in hotels, but it is unknown if the project will be affected. A spokesperson for the hotel chain did not respond to a request for comment.
Tesla's cuts are also affecting the availability of CCS to NACS adapters that are supposed to ship to Ford, Rivian and GM EV owners this year (and eventually all major automakers), allowing them to use Tesla's superchargers. the company. Some Mustang Mach-E and F-150 Lightning owners taken to reddit sharing emails sent by Ford informing that its free fast charging adapter was delayed “due to supply constraints.” Some have been moved from May to June, others until September.
Tesla's Supercharger network is widely accepted as the gold standard for how to build EV charging infrastructure, a network that other EV networks can't seem to match in size and reliability. According BloombergNEFTesla accounts for 74 percent of all fast chargers in North America.
Part of Tesla's success is thanks to Tinucci, who oversaw Tesla's portfolio of Supercharger locations, led business-to-business destination charger projects, and spearheaded Tesla's Magic Dock-capable Supercharger installations to enable other electric vehicles. manufacturers can connect without having to bring an adapter. .
According to a former employee who spoke with Washington Post, Tinucci met with Musk privately before the layoffs to express his opposition to the magnitude of the layoffs. Now that Tinucci is out, along with most of the Supercharger team, Tesla's big lead is at risk.
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″>
