Elon Musk fired the head of Tesla’s Supercharger division tardy last month with his entire 500-person team. It was a confusing decision that raised more questions than answers, especially considering Musk had recently convinced all other automakers to make it to make their electric vehicles compatible with Tesla chargers. Conceited The latest Reuters report However, it is correct that firing the Supercharger team was not a business decision or a change in strategy. It was just Musk getting mad at someone for refusing what he asked for and punishing the entire team as part of his tantrum.
Rebecca Tinucci, Tesla’s head of charging, had already laid off 15 to 20 percent of the Supercharger team when Musk began pushing for further layoffs, according to Reuters sources. When she stepped away, he not only fired her, but also fired his entire team. Since then, Musk has been trying to do damage control, tweeting about further expansion of the charging network and reportedly trying to rehire some of Supercharger’s laid-off workers.
The clarification reportedly came after a leadership change and appears to be part of a broader pattern of chaos and confusion going on inside Tesla:
Tinucci was one of the few women in senior leadership positions at Tesla. According to four former Supercharger team employees, she recently began reporting directly to Musk following the departure of battery and energy chief Drew Baglino. They said Baglino had overseen the charging division in the past without much involvement from Musk.
The charging team layoffs are the latest drama in a tumultuous year for Tesla, as Musk has shut down or delayed several key actions aimed at boosting the rapid growth in electric vehicle sales that investors expected. Instead, Musk now says Tesla will focus mainly on autonomous cars, an extremely competitive and riskier business that could take years to develop.
In the first quarter, the company reported its first decline in car sales since 2020 amid fierce competition from Chinese electric vehicle makers and falling global demand for electric vehicles. In April, Reuters reported that Tesla had scrapped plans for a long-awaited low-cost car known as the Model 2. That put into doubt Tesla’s plans for recent factories in Mexico and India, where Musk was scheduled to travel last month to meet the prime minister. Narendra Modi, before a last-minute cancellation. Many members of the management team left as a result of extensive layoffs throughout the company
And yet apart from that cancellation of four planned Supercharger sites in Up-to-date York, Tesla’s global supply manager recently sent an email to contractors and suppliers – seen by Reuters – asking them to “please hold off on work on newly awarded construction projects.” It also included the line: “I understand that this time of change can be tough and that patience is not uncomplicated when you are expected to get paid!”
After the Supercharger team left, Tesla hired an energy team to take over and complete various charging projects. They also apparently received little training to ensure they could do their jobs well, with one contractor stating that Tesla employees he has spoken to since the mass layoffs “don’t know anything.”
Tesla’s energy division, which sells solar systems and battery storage, was already struggling to cope with the workload before it was forced to take over from the Supercharger team, according to two former employees. So it was a surprise when Musk later said that Tesla “still plans to grow the Supercharger network, just at a slower pace” and stated that “Tesla will spend well over $500 million expanding our Supercharger network to create thousands of NEW chargers this year.” ”
While $500 million is certainly a lot of money, it’s reportedly much less than what the team planned to invest in chargers, with one estimate suggesting a 77 percent decline in the number of superchargers Tesla planned to build in 2024. Still, overseeing the installation of these nodes charging will likely require a team of several hundred employees that Tesla no longer has.
The layoffs will also affect contractors who hired their own employees and established a budget for a given year based on contracts with Tesla. Musk’s decision to get rid of the Supercharger team and limit Supercharger’s expansion also hurts these companies. “It’s just unfortunate that now they have to stick to all these different projects,” one former employee told Reuters. “It’s really depressed to see all these relationships go down the drain and people are really livid, and rightly so.”
