Tesla Lays Off Entire Supercharger Team as Musk Talks About the Future of Superchargers
Tesla chief executive Elon Musk emailed the company’s executives informing them about further layoffs including Supercharging, Public Policy and New Product Iteration teams. The reductions come in addition to the more than 10 percent staff cut announced two weeks ago.
In an email seen by The Information, Musk stated that the company needs “to be absolutely hardcore about headcount and cost reduction”.
“Starting at 10 AM EST Tuesday, I will ask for the resignation of any executive who retains more than three people who don’t obviously pass the excellent, necessary, and trustworthy test,” the Tesla CEO wrote.
Musk Talks About the Future of Superchargers
Tesla recently reached 50,000 Superchargers globally and marked the occasion with a special edition Supercharger. Superchargers are the world's most reliable, fast-charging network, partly due to Tesla’s real-time monitoring. As Tesla has recently started opening its Supercharging network to other automakers, the move to axe the entire Supercharger team caused perplexity among investors and customers.
On X, Musk commented on the concerns a few hours later saying Tesla still plans to grow the Supercharger network, "just at a slower pace for new locations”. The company will instead focus on “100% uptime and expansion of existing locations,” he added.
This statement is particularly odd given that Tesla’s Superchargers are already highly reliable with more than a 99% uptime. However, depending on your region, some charging locations can become rather congested, and this will likely worsen as more vehicles come equipped with NACS ports and get access to the Supercharger network.
Rivian recently announced that it will open up its much smaller network of fast chargers to Tesla and other EVs. This may help fill in some gaps, especially since Rivian tends to focus on more rural areas.
Tesla still plans to grow the Supercharger network, just at a slower pace for new locations and more focus on 100% uptime and expansion of existing locations
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 30, 2024
William Jameson, strategic charging programs lead at Tesla, confirmed on X that Musk had let the "entire charging org go”. Later on, Musk disclosed that all the sites that are currently under construction “will be completed, ” including the highly anticipated Hollywood Diner. There’s also a new Supercharger planned that will be New England’s largest and include a solar CyberCanopy.
Musk added that Tesla will add “additional Superchargers anywhere where there are gaps,” although as he previously said, it will be at a much slower rate than before.
Tesla announced the first generation of Superchargers in September 2012 with the first 6 locations in the US while expansion to Europe and Asia arrived in mid-2013.
Open of Supercharging Network
In May 2023, Ford announced that it became the first automaker to gain access to Tesla Superchargers across the U.S. and Canada. Less than two weeks later, GM CEO Mary Barra said in an X Spaces with Elon Musk, that GM customers would also access more than 12,000 Tesla Superchargers in North America.
Major automakers such as Volvo, Mercedes, and Honda plus EV startups including Rivian and Polestar have followed over the next months bringing up the number to 20.
Further Teams Affected
Daniel Ho, Director of Vehicle Programs and New Product Introduction (NPI), has also left the company, along with the entire public policy team previously under Rohan Patel, former Vice President for Public Policy and Business Development.
At the time, Patel said on X that Tesla has “the best policy/biz-dev team in the business” while thanking Elon Musk for “empowering” to “lead big initiatives at the company”.
