Tesla's profitable Supercharger network is in limbo after Musk fired the entire team

Earlier this year, Tesla's Supercharger team was tasked with the impossible. “We were on an exponential path,” a former team member told TechCrunch, adding that the new goals were “super crazy.” Despite the obstacles such expectations can create, “every time they raised the metric, we met it.”

Then one day in April, CEO Elon Musk eliminated the entire division, even though it was profitable last year.

With more than 25,000 charging ports In the US and more than 50,000 worldwide, the Supercharger network is the undisputed king of EV fast charging. Widespread, well-maintained and fast, the network has transformed the way people view electric vehicles, easing concerns about range anxiety among broad swathes of the car-buying public. But with recent layoffs, Musk cast a shadow over the private infrastructure project.

While some people expected the layoffs to affect the Supercharger division, few thought they would be eliminated.

“We built the best network in the world,” according to the former Tesla employee who spoke to TechCrunch. “We were taking care of the ship. “Nothing was frivolous.”

It wasn't enough to save the team. Hundreds of people who were responsible for the construction of the company's shaft suddenly disappeared. That demise has industry observers, shareholders and former Tesla employees wondering how it will affect EV owners and the company.

The automaker has been going through a rough patch lately, with sales not growing at their usual breakneck pace. Price cuts aimed at boosting sales have hit profits, which fell 55% in the first quarter from the same period a year earlier. With Tesla being pushed, Musk made cuts, not with a scalpel, but with a chainsaw.

Tesla began cutting staff and the first round of layoffs was not the last. The Supercharger division, around 500 people strong, were laid off in a second wave that broke out at the end of April.

Friday, musk twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1788834859110002716″ target=”_blank” rel=”noreferrer noopener”>saying that Tesla will spend $500 million to expand and improve the Supercharger network. But, as internal knowledge demonstrates, it will be difficult to achieve that goal without a team overseeing the work.

Before the layoffs, the Supercharger network seemed poised to widen its lead over its competitors.

One source explained that Tesla had refined the production and installation of superchargers to the point where each pole could cost as little as $20,000 to install, less than half that of the closest competitor. A significantly more powerful version 4 of the Supercharger hardware, once poised for a wider release, now appears stalled.

At the time of the layoffs, dozens of Supercharger sites were in various stages of planning and construction, according to insider information shared with TechCrunch. Some sites that were almost ready to open are in limbo or may not open at all, the source said.

Previously, Tesla was in a strong position to win awards through the federally funded National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, which has $5 billion to disburse to build a robust national network of fast chargers.

The company had also been focusing its expansion plans on locations with high demand, they added. According to the source, when the federal government was interested in improving coverage on a certain route and demand had not yet materialized, Tesla's policy team would prioritize obtaining NEVI funding for the site.

“Everything had a purpose. Everything had a purpose,” a source told TechCrunch.

Often that meant building Superchargers on new sites, which are easier to develop. Expanding existing ones is incredibly challenging, the source said, because it is often necessary to renegotiate leases, coordinate utility upgrades and fix existing infrastructure, all while continuing to serve existing customers. “The cost per seat is exponentially higher than a new site.”

Analysts have long speculated that the Supercharger network could easily become a profit center, just like amazon did when it opened its cloud services to other companies. But there, Tesla beat amazon: The Supercharger team was told the network was profitable, the source said, even before other automakers gained access.

How the Supercharger network came about

Tesla opened the first Supercharger station in September 2012 when the first examples of the Model S were roaming the streets. Early models could deliver 100 kW, which was a high figure at the time: CHAdeMO, a competing standard used by the Nissan Leaf, maxed out at 62.5 kW at the time, and the combined charging system (CCS ) was still in the prototype phase. .

The first stations opened in California and soon more began to spring up along the highways of the East Coast, then the Midwest and Texas. After a year, the company improved the equipment and increased the maximum power to 120 kW. And within three years, Tesla had a network that spanned the US, making electric travel possible from coast to coast. As the company entered Europe, China and other countries, it added Superchargers there as well. Today, the network has nearly 60,000 charging stations on four continents.

Why the Supercharger network is considered the best

In the early years, Tesla Model S and x owners enjoyed unlimited charging at the stations, an incentive aimed at winning over new customers. When the Model 3 was launched, the company began billing new owners for charging sessions, although the process was much simpler than what competitors offered. Drivers simply had to plug in the car and Tesla would bill a credit card on file.

Current Supercharger publications support charging speeds of up to 250 kW. Other networks max out at 350 kW, but are not as reliable. Tesla says that its Network uptime is 99.95%., much better than its competitors. Real-world use suggests that's not far from the truth: A University of California-Berkeley survey of EV drivers in the San Francisco Bay Area found that while 25% of drivers non-Teslas experienced major problems with public chargers, Only 4% of Tesla drivers did so at Superchargers.

Can other electric vehicles use superchargers?

For more than a decade, Superchargers were available only to Tesla owners. Because charging sessions had to be initiated by a handshake between the vehicle and the charger, and because billing was done behind the scenes, Tesla had tight control over who could use them. The company's patented plug design didn't hurt either.

That began to change in the fall of 2022, when the company made details of its plug design available to other automakers. (At that time, Tesla was already using the same communications protocol as CCS when charging.) Then, in May 2023, Ford announced that it would adopt Tesla's plug design, known as the North American Charging Standard, and that its customers would gain access. to 12,000 Superchargers in the US and Canada. Soon the floodgates opened and GM, Rivian, Volvo and others followed suit. Today, all major automakers selling in the United States have adopted NACS.

These are all the major brands that have announced the adoption of NACS for future electric vehicles:

In February, Tesla began granting access to automakers. Ford was the first to enter and the company began offering free adapters to existing EV owners for a limited time.

What's next for the Supercharger network?

Nobody really knows. With future Supercharger sites in limbo, the network may have reached its zenith, at least for the moment. Musk has said that expansion into new sites will continue “at a slower pace” and the focus will be on “100% uptime and expansion of existing locations.” Without a team, all of that will be a challenge, especially working on existing locations, which are more complex tasks.