Entire Supercharging Team Fired?

News yesterday is that the entire 500+ person word-wide SC team has been let go. That is alarming. Why would Elon sack the execs and all the employees of this important part of Tesla's business? Could Tesla be selling the SC network off to a third party? Opinions? Other theories?

 

[MontyFloyd]

This is highly debatable.

The COVID era broke Elon in 2020. He went anti-government, anti-Vaxx, right wing conspiracies, etc then. Since then is when we've really seen deeply irrational behavior. Sure, he tested the waters a bit before that, but now it's the dominant behavior.

What has Elon done that is groundbreaking since then? SpaceX already existed and was landing rockets, the CT and roadster had already been announced and Tesla was full in on self driving, Nuralink was going, the boring company was going...

We've seen, what, a man in a suit pretending to be a robot and being forced to buy Twitter after a bender? It's quite possible that he's no longer innovative, insightful, or ground breaking and just uncontrolled. People change.

Ah, yes, thanks for reminder.

Ironically this happened during the tRump era.

Also the first Biden year and Biden's refusal to even acknowledge Tesla publicly (shame on Biden admin!).

 

[tivoboy]

He's worth $200B today with 12%, which is only about $65B in TSLA. So I was adding about $130B to whatever TSLA he would theoretically own because that's what he supposedly has in other places.

58% = $330B, plus $130B = $460B, which is as accurate to $500B as any numbers Elon ever gives. I'm still waiting on my FSD free trials "this week" and it's been 6 weeks.

Yeah, I don’t really know where the other 130B is coming from, 40% of SpaceX might be worth 70B, I doubt anything else is worth a total of another 60B, but who knows. Dead Bird his ownership MIGHT be 8-10B.

But, I do also think that his actual ownership of TSLA is higher than the 12% you list. As we have seen discussion of the desire to own 25%, it was reported that his ownership including non-exercised options - and not the disputed pay package, he was closer to 17% already.

 

[Eric33432]

Your take, or do you have something supporting this? If it's true, then "not seeing the same vision" is a good reason. I bet there's a lot more going on, not just one dimension

That's why I said apparently.

Obviously there is a lot going on, like reducing costs.

 

[stopcrazypp]

That's why I said apparently.

Obviously there is a lot going on, like reducing costs.

The gist I get from the rumorville was when Elon was doing the 10-20% cut across the board, the head of SC new installs Rebecca Tinucci pushed back, and to make an example of her, he fired the SC new installs team under her. The maintenance folks were left mostly intact (although recently some of them were fired too, but even from accounts of people recently fired, maintenance still has people working).

I don't think there was any sort of overall well thought out strategy to it, given to achieve his stated goals (finishing current installs and going at a slower pace) he should have at least kept a skeleton crew of people.

Currently even the OEMs working with Tesla on NACS conversion and supercharger access lost their contacts, which IMO is much bigger deal than stopping installs of new stations. If Tesla does not quickly reestablish contact and continue on, NACS adoption may fail. As another put it, if Elon did this move in 2025 when almost all of the OEMs have already been added to the SC network and there is no turning back from NACS, it would make a lot more sense in timing. Right now is one of the worst times to do it.

 

[ken_neth]

Meanwhile, Model 3's are $72K,

Huh?
My total for recent (delivered 3-26-24) purchase of M3LR is $52,201.99 which includes WA sales tax, delivery, black paint, and all.

 

[HitchHiker71]

Yeah, I don’t really know where the other 130B is coming from, 40% of SpaceX might be worth 70B, I doubt anything else is worth a total of another 60B, but who knows. Dead Bird his ownership MIGHT be 8-10B.

But, I do also think that his actual ownership of TSLA is higher than the 12% you list. As we have seen discussion of the desire to own 25%, it was reported that his ownership including non-exercised options - and not the disputed pay package, he was closer to 17% already.

This was from 2/1/2024 so it's a bit dated - but the data isn't far off from current valuations:

 

[texas_star_TM3]

They are referring to the claim in 2018 that there would be a $35K Model 3. Which actually did ship for a while in 2019, not 5 years later as claimed. I know two people that have had them since 2019. But they were rare and Tesla didn't really want to sell them given how well the more expensive models were selling.

Remarkably, in 2024, you actually can buy a Model 3 for way under $35K in 2018 dollars. $39K in 2024 is about $32K in 2018.

ok. let's not move the goal post that far to factor in inflation 6 yrs later to pretend the price point promise was met... even at just 2.5% annual inflation that would add up a bit...

 

[texas_star_TM3]

Huh?
My total for recent (delivered 3-26-24) purchase of M3LR is $52,201.99 which includes WA sales tax, delivery, black paint, and all.

he's making the argument that quoting THE MOST expensive Tacoma as price reference is as logical as quoting the most expensive Model 3....

 

[gearchruncher]

My total for recent (delivered 3-26-24) purchase of M3LR is $52,201.99 which includes WA sales tax, delivery, black paint, and all.

You can buy a Model 3P with the most expensive paint, expensive interior, FSD, all accessories, and then add the track pack to get to $72K before tax. Since @EatsShoots uses the most extreme example of pricing a Toyota Tacoma (down to including sand recovery boards) means we should use the same standard for Tesla and all other cars. Did you know a Porsche 911 costs $550K+?

And your "what are you talking about" response is the exact point of why that's a silly standard to claim that Toyota charges too much for cars.

 

[MP3Mike]

Just to give an example of how horrible things are now that the "whole" Supercharger team was laid off:

Thieves steal high-voltage Tesla Supercharger cables from Montrose charging station

Imagine pulling into the gas station only to find out that someone cut all of the hoses attached to the pumps.

www.click2houston.com

That’s the equivalent of what happened at a Houston-area electric vehicle charging station over the weekend.

Drivers pulled into the Kipling Street Tesla Supercharger only to find that all but one of the cords to plug into their vehicle was cut clean and stolen.

[snip]

Tesla didn’t respond to KPRC 2′s request for comment. However, all of the chargers were replaced and functional by Monday evening.

Oh wait, not horrible. The maintenance team was still able to repair chargers quickly...

 

[gearchruncher]

Oh wait, not horrible. The maintenance team was still able to repair chargers quickly...

That admittedly is a good sign, and hopefully is the future of Tesla Supercharger maintenance.

The pessimist side is that this story is from a location 2 hours away from Tesla's headquarters in a state where Tesla is trying to gather favors, got a lot of news coverage, and may not reflect the commitment to a supercharger in a rural area thousands of miles away. They were also cut and repaired right before the layoffs that were announced on Sunday night. Only time will tell as we see more.

 

[tivoboy]

This was from 2/1/2024 so it's a bit dated - but the data isn't far off from current valuations:

View attachment 1045086

Wow. I guess I was pretty spot on. Assuming the 50b is some amount of the legacy 56b deal

 

[EatsShoots]

And this relates to Tesla and supercharging layoffs how?

I cannot even remember how the heck we began talking about it.

 

[MontyFloyd]

This might have been posted here before (30 pages to look at!), but in case it is not:

Read the wild email Tesla is sending to suppliers amid Supercharger chaos

After firing its Supercharger team, Tesla is unsurprisingly finding it hard to manage contractors who previously worked with the team.

electrek.co

Without a doubt this decision is a massive and deep self inflicted wound, the only way to fix is to immediately rehire everyone back as if it never happened.
In no way will this be like before, the damage is permanent, this is the best way to mitigate the bleeding.


BTW: This is very much like the first Starship launch where the water suppression system was not installed because Elon did not want to wait. Result was a launch that suffered badly, not reach many of its goals. Second launch is what the first one should have been.

 

[smogne41]

There’s no $35k Model 3. Presently the Model 3 RWD starts at $39k.

To be fair, $35k in 2016 is ~$45500 now.

 

[Durzel]

The gist I get from the rumorville was when Elon was doing the 10-20% cut across the board, the head of SC new installs Rebecca Tinucci pushed back, and to make an example of her, he fired the SC new installs team under her. The maintenance folks were left mostly intact (although recently some of them were fired too, but even from accounts of people recently fired, maintenance still has people working).

I don't think there was any sort of overall well thought out strategy to it, given to achieve his stated goals (finishing current installs and going at a slower pace) he should have at least kept a skeleton crew of people.

Currently even the OEMs working with Tesla on NACS conversion and supercharger access lost their contacts, which IMO is much bigger deal than stopping installs of new stations. If Tesla does not quickly reestablish contact and continue on, NACS adoption may fail. As another put it, if Elon did this move in 2025 when almost all of the OEMs have already been added to the SC network and there is no turning back from NACS, it would make a lot more sense in timing. Right now is one of the worst times to do it.

I don't know how slow these ships turn but I guess it's feasible that the decisions they made to go with NACS were themselves some time in the making, and that they are already far down the road towards adoption that bailing on it now would cause more harm than good.

There is also perhaps the inertia argument - it took a lot of momentum to get them all across the finish line, so for any one of them to bail now would be a significant event. One would assume that Stellantis are in the "best" position to pull out, if it came to it, having been the last to arrive at the party.

 

[EatsShoots]

This might have been posted here before (30 pages to look at!), but in case it is not:

Read the wild email Tesla is sending to suppliers amid Supercharger chaos

After firing its Supercharger team, Tesla is unsurprisingly finding it hard to manage contractors who previously worked with the team.

electrek.co

Without a doubt this decision is a massive and deep self inflicted wound, the only way to fix is to immediately rehire everyone back as if it never happened.
In no way will this be like before, the damage is permanent, this is the best way to mitigate the bleeding.


BTW: This is very much like the first Starship launch where the water suppression system was not installed because Elon did not want to wait. Result was a launch that suffered badly, not reach many of its goals. Second launch is what the first one should have been.

This is the kind of email one might expect from a startup.

Can you imagine Toyota dumping an entire team of its people, then telling suppliers it's in the midst of hiring their replacements and to "hold tight" on getting their money for a bit while it works things through?

 

[zoomer0056]

This might have been posted here before (30 pages to look at!), but in case it is not:

Read the wild email Tesla is sending to suppliers amid Supercharger chaos

After firing its Supercharger team, Tesla is unsurprisingly finding it hard to manage contractors who previously worked with the team.

electrek.co

Without a doubt this decision is a massive and deep self inflicted wound, the only way to fix is to immediately rehire everyone back as if it never happened.
In no way will this be like before, the damage is permanent, this is the best way to mitigate the bleeding.


BTW: This is very much like the first Starship launch where the water suppression system was not installed because Elon did not want to wait. Result was a launch that suffered badly, not reach many of its goals. Second launch is what the first one should have been.

Nobody and no company signed this email. Why? Is that because somebody would get sued for defamation from a fake email?

 

[texas_star_TM3]

To be fair, $35k in 2016 is ~$45500 now.

to be fair ... EV battery prices have collapsed since 2016...

 

[brainhouston]

Because that worked out so well for CCS?

Whats ur point? elaborate...
Besides few Rivian CCS stations, i'm not aware of any other EV manufacturer having their own CCS chargers..
I've successfully charged at Electrify America and ChargePoint
There's many other brands
Sure uptime is not as great as Tesla SC but they do work n EV owners do use them...