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

[A-A-Ron]

I do love forums.
They are the ONLY social media I participate in.
But conjecture is the entertainment portion of the forum.

I thought the deluge of posts every winter about dealers putting the wrong battery in was the entertainment portion? Or is it the off-center speedo now? Or maybe it's the people that really, really, really want autopark in all its terrible glory.

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[Snakebitten]

I've worked for a CrAzY CEO visionary most of my adult productive life. ~26 years. (I wasn't a real adult until about age 40)

He too gets second guessed around the water cooler continuously. And he does deserve to be since it comes with the territory.
He's made some real genius moves.
He's made some real flop moves too.

But I'm fairly hesitant to pile on when he blows it because I can't help but acknowledge that I have fed the family, paid off the mortgage, and none of the kids owe on student loans.
He'd say I earned every penny that his endeavors has paid me.
I'd say if there weren't CrAzY risk takers with very thick skin, I'd have had a much less interesting career.

 

[shelnian]

Maybe he made a deal with China to make superchargers in China.

 

[Rabidsquirrel22]

There is a possibility that this was done to bring in a new team. Elon did this same thing at SpaceX with the Starlink team a few years ago. They told him it would be minimum of 5 years to deploy the satellite constellation network and that wasn't fast enough for him. He brought in a new team and got it done in 2 years.

So maybe he wasn't happy with the speed of the supercharge network's growth? There are a lot of Tesla owners on X talking about how long its been taking for new sites to go from winning the votes to getting built.

I guess that would be the optimistic speculation on this news until we let some time pass and see what happens.

 

[voxel]

There is a possibility that this was done to bring in a new team. Elon did this same thing at SpaceX with the Starlink team a few years ago. They told him it would be minimum of 5 years to deploy the satellite constellation network and that wasn't fast enough for him. He brought in a new team and got it done in 2 years.

So maybe he wasn't happy with the speed of the supercharge network's growth? There are a lot of Tesla owners on X talking about how long its been taking for new sites to go from winning the votes to getting built.

Like one in Orlando but that location is full of politics + greed. OUC has "demand surge" charges and I don't recall a single non-OUC DC charger inside their territory (ok maybe there is one but it is at the edge of OUC service). Utilities have to be willing to accept DC charging can have large spikes in usage.

SC growth looks pretty normal to me:

https://supercharge.info/charts

 

[Jimrpa]

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?

Aren’t they now selling the supercharger hardware to 3rd parties who can install and private-label them?

 

[Malacandra]

 

[Mirak]

Lemmo know when Ford lays off its entire OTA team.

 

[mdolan92869]

Lemmo know when Ford lays off its entire OTA team.

Soon™

 

[HondaRacer]

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"

 

[dtbaker61]

It’s terrible news for EV adoption. However Tesla can’t carry the industry on its shoulders. Others should step up.

others will step up for sure... not just for EVs, but in cooperation with utilities.

My prediction is that the 'next generation' of L3 chargers will be installed in conjunction with big battery banks to enable storage+passthru during solar surplus time (10am-3pm) when energy will be cheap, and have 300-500 kWhr stored up to either sell as EV charge sessions in the evenings, or sell back to local utilities at night when TOU rates will be higher than daytime rates as more renewables come on line.

Utilities are already looking for ways to provide loads to charge and control batteries during solar hours and sell at peak rates in the evening.

between L3 chargers w internal battery buffers, and EVs at home with (future) 2-way chargers .... EVs are the best 'double use' energy storage I see coming the quickest to improve Grid stability and soak up day-time surplus

 

[TheSteelRider]

1. Mind officially blown
2. Whey are they eviscerating their top differentiator? I will have to take back this viewpoint
   

   Well, it can be argued that Tesla really is an energy delivery company not a car company. They really do some brainless things with cars, but man do they ever win when it comes to vehicle charging and home battery backup. It's love/hate!
   
   The main difference is, when Tesla says things about the supercharger network, they are true. When they layout a plan to build /expand the network, they follow through. They have yet, to my knowledge, claimed that the supercharger network will magically wirelessly beam power directly into your car, or that a neural network will enhance the electrons going into your car to give you more range, etc. etc.
   
   Conversely, and strangely, when it comes to their cars it just seems like a giant pump-and-dump scam for their stock price.
   
   (Yes, I do remember the robot that would plug in the car automatically, and I do remember the battery swaps. But, those were ancillary to the actual charging network so I'm not really weighting them in the mix)

3. But, I am doubling down on this view, which I received many-a-disagreement about. Can I say I told you so yet, or too soon?

   I mean, you opened the door, bowed, pointed, and BEGGED me to walk through, what you expect?
   
   On a serious note, +1 on all points on the post. I will disagree with 1 point, well maybe not disagree since you didn't take a stance. I guess more like, point out a viewpoint. Years ago, I read "How to Castrate a Bull" which was about a CEO of a company who was very Elon-like, who upon reflection, realized after he was ousted from the company that in reality he was not a "large company" CEO and the book is his reflection of this. It's basically how I feel about Elon. In my opinion, Elon should have stepped down as CEO around about 2019-ish. He's clearly not fit to be the CEO anymore of Tesla, more like the chief engineer or something. But, I feel in the CEO role he's now holding back the company.
   
   The reality is, if we want EVs to go more mainstream we really can't have someone like Elon being the CEO of Tesla. Even the most ardent fans really need to step back and realize how all of the "420 funding secured", over-paying for his brother's company to save it for bankruptcy, "Full self driving coming this year, no this year, no this year, no ...", telsa bots, boring bricks, ... I think you get the point. He's becoming a meme, and that meme is now being projected to the EV world as a whole. Now, other factors are at play, I will admit, but you know, least common denominator and such.

 

[areacode413]

Minions assemble…VT I89 and I91 needs upgraded charging for the MachE.

 

[GreaseMonkey]

others will step up for sure... not just for EVs, but in cooperation with utilities.

My prediction is that the 'next generation' of L3 chargers will be installed in conjunction with big battery banks to enable storage+passthru during solar surplus time (10am-3pm) when energy will be cheap, and have 300-500 kWhr stored up to either sell as EV charge sessions in the evenings, or sell back to local utilities at night when TOU rates will be higher than daytime rates as more renewables come on line.

Utilities are already looking for ways to provide loads to charge and control batteries during solar hours and sell at peak rates in the evening.

between L3 chargers w internal battery buffers, and EVs at home with (future) 2-way chargers .... EVs are the best 'double use' energy storage I see coming the quickest to improve Grid stability and soak up day-time surplus

Then why are there 200 pages of comments about the lousy adapter? And similarly on other cars forums? Others had ten years to step up but no one did.

 

[TheSteelRider]

Out of Spec addressing this issue:

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