Tesla Lays Off Entire Supercharger Team [Update: Musk says supercharger growth will continue] ** WARNING: NO POLITICS***

[Kamuelaflyer]

If you read Eloon's X post that he simply said SC growth will slow down in order to focus on uptime. Perhaps the layoffs were for the expansion team. Maintenance team still intact?

Quality of quantity it seems.

The entire team was fired. Other manufacturers such as Ford and Rivian no longer have a point of contact with Tesla regarding their access to the supercharger network or any other questions related to the various agreements. Why? because they were fired. Via email.

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[Eric_C_Boston]

It appears some important people will eventually be rehired as it was what happened before, but would I want to go back if I was in this situation? Likely not.

From Electrek:
Sources familiar with the matter believe that some of the layoffs have nothing to do with hiring inefficiencies or restructuring, but rather with Musk throwing his weight around Tesla.

Two sources told Electrek that Tinucci was fighting back pressure from Musk to fire a bigger percentage of her team, and the CEO decided to let go of the entire team as an example.

Musk wrote in an email to executives on Sunday:

“Hopefully, these actions are making it clear that we need to be absolutely hard-core about headcount and cost reduction. While some on exec staff are taking this seriously, most are not yet doing so.”

The message is clear: fire people as many people as I’m asking, or you and your entire team will be gone.

https://electrek.co/2024/05/01/elon-musk-throwing-weight-tesla-wrecking-ball/

 

[NerdUno]

If you believe anything Elon says, you haven't been paying attention.

 

[BadgerGreg]

One big unanswered question is how profitable this part of the business actually is. Tesla doesn't release this information in their SEC filings. Given the high costs of installing/maintaining the superchargers AND the expensive demand charges imposed by electric utilities AND the fact that many of the supercharger locations are only lightly utilized, I have to wonder whether there is much profit here. Like gas station owners (who make very little profit on the sale of gasoline), perhaps DCFC charging is turning into the same thing: a low-margin business that only serves to drag Tesla's financials further down.

This is only speculation, but I have a hunch that the companies building DCFC networks are quickly finding out that it's not the cash machine they thought it might be.

 

[EELinneman]

You’d not notice. That would be about 0.0035% of their USA employees.

You assume they are US based. It's likely outsourced to an offshore team to save costs.

 

[RickMachE]

Keep in mind that the government funds are attached to an uptime requirement, that if missed, means no government funds.

 

[Kamuelaflyer]

You assume they are US based. It's likely outsourced to an offshore team to save costs.

Puts serious hat on.

The ota folks are USA based Ford employees. Keep in mind however that the module programming has to actually be done by the module manufacturer on the current gen cars. The process of pushing an ota out to the cars isn’t as easy as many might think.

 

[mkhuffman]

Ford is likely discussing delaying the switch to nacs a few years or abandoning it all together. Anything could happen if even one company pulls back.

That would be a bad decision. It is still the best charging network, and standardizing the plug will improve life for all BEV owners. If Ford does do that, I will not be happy and likely I will not buy another Ford BEV.

I would really like my next BEV to be native NACs, but in the meantime, I am happy with the adapter. I will probably get one of the extension cords because I hate the idea of taking up two SC spaces.

 

[mkhuffman]

I am concerned about how Tesla will be able to grow the Supercharger network, and it appears that slowing down translates to at least 4 supercharging sites in NYC got canceled. These had been proposed to help with the surge in EV rideshare vehicles in NYC, as well as slower charging in winter. This doesn't look good, and likely will slow EV adoption.
https://insideevs.com/news/718045/nyc-tesla-supercharger-sites/

It appears they will not be adding new sites as quickly as before, not stopping all expansion. Time will tell what really happens.

I really don't think Tesla makes much (if any) profit off charging vehicles. It makes good business sense to expand the use of underutilized SC stations to non-Teslas, in order to increase revenue at those stations that are probably not breaking even. So I seriously doubt they will change the strategy to open NACs to other car companies.

The economics of DCFC stations are horrible, and they need high volume or they will never pay off the capital investment. The other option is to significantly raise the cost of charging, which would piss everyone off and make traveling in a BEV much more expensive than ICEVs.

With the BEV market causing massive losses for most car companies, and the fierce competition in the market, cutting cost is essential for companies like Tesla who have such a huge reliance on BEVs as part of their revenue.

Ford can afford to take the profit hit. Tesla, Rivian, Lucid, Fisker, etc. cannot. Rivian is revamping their production processes to reduce cost. I am very interested to see what they produce starting the beginning of May. Will it be a significantly simpler R1? Nobody really knows. I hope it is, or they might not survive as a company. That is how bad it is. And Tesla knows it.

I want Tesla to survive as a company, and cutting cost is key to that. Whether or not this was the right cut is hard for us to say. Maybe it wasn't, maybe it was. Regardless, it needs to be done IMO.

 

[music_cities]

Corollary to this, I continue to think that rural and isolated areas could often best be served by 60 amp AC charging stations, and with some sort of reservation system. You don't want to be third in line when it is going to take 4-5 hours to charge your vehicle.

Battery backed up DCFCs are the way to go. So that they can be charged and ready when a customer comes along and the customer charge quickly. Also, good ones can also provide backup power to the facility (eg strip mall) in the case of a power outage. On the supply side, they can take commercial 3 phase power.

Some reservation system would be handy for some uses, but if the supply is eg 25kw and someone wants to charge 20% to 80% worst case would be a very long lunch charge.

 

[MotownMachdoc]

Updated with Elon Musk's first comment after supercharger team layoffs:

"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"





News Article:
https://electrek.co/2024/04/29/tesla-conducting-more-layoffs-including-entire-supercharger-team/

Reportedly Tesla will be letting the entire 500 person Supercharger team go today. Sounds like they will not be taking on any new Supercharger projects which is extremely unfortunate. Very bad news for the EV world if Tesla doesn't want to build any more Superchargers.

You also wonder if this will further impact deliveries of Supercharger adapters. Did the Supercharger team's handling of non-Tesla NACS charging somehow anger Musk? Did he suddenly decide that Superchargers weren’t going to be profitable anymore?

Maybe looking ahead to hydrogen power

 

[thekat03]

I really don't think Tesla makes much (if any) profit off charging vehicles. It makes good business sense to expand the use of underutilized SC stations to non-Teslas, in order to increase revenue at those stations that are probably not breaking even. So I seriously doubt they will change the strategy to open NACs to other car companies.

Not directly. However, many people decided to get a Tesla over other EVs in part because of the charging network.

 

[EELinneman]

Puts serious hat on.

The ota folks are USA based Ford employees. Keep in mind however that the module programming has to actually be done by the module manufacturer on the current gen cars. The process of pushing an ota out to the cars isn’t as easy as many might think.

This is enlightening

 

[Gloff]

Battery backed up DCFCs are the way to go. So that they can be charged and ready when a customer comes along and the customer charge quickly. Also, good ones can also provide backup power to the facility (eg strip mall) in the case of a power outage. On the supply side, they can take commercial 3 phase power.

Some reservation system would be handy for some uses, but if the supply is eg 25kw and someone wants to charge 20% to 80% worst case would be a very long lunch charge.

This is highly under-utilized. I think the biggest barrier to entry on this is the battery packs. Freewire has the right idea, and I think it needs to be executed more. Higher density batteries would help solve this, similar to the range argument.

 

[mkhuffman]

This is highly under-utilized. I think the biggest barrier to entry on this is the battery packs. Freewire has the right idea, and I think it needs to be executed more. Higher density batteries would help solve this, similar to the range argument.

This is a good point.

Another is the capital cost needed to build out DCFC stations. It is already high, making it difficult to get a return on investment. Adding battery storage adds cost, increasing the ROI time. Is it worth it to the station builder to add batteries if it adds a year to the ROI time?

@dtbaker61 mentioned in a post months ago that he was looking into building battery supplimented DCFC dispensers in areas where it is hard to get large power lines. Maybe he has some insight into the economics?

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