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]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1788632840864702517

Yeup!

Last night as I was laying in bed I was actually thinking: If I had a lot of money I would be grabbing all those people and start my own charger installer business!
And then stick it to Elon by installing CCS1 everywhere a SC was going to go!
(wanted to post this earlier, but I have to work for living)

Good on BP to read my mind!
BP Keen to Buy Tesla Supercharging Sites for US Expansion

 

[flixden]

A company easily spends 30%+ on taxes, benefits, stock options, etc for employees. The cost to a company is not just what the employee is paid directly.
So this puts it closer to $200K "salary" on average. For an engineering team in a tech company (not a car company, right?) $200K is pretty average today, including all the directors and managers.

Let's say I'm off the average pay is $150K. That's $225K a year spend by Tesla, That's still $113M a year, just on salaries for the people locating and designing new supercharger sites. Not including continuing maintenance, the land leases themselves, the construction, or the actual charger hardware. This BP spending $150M a year is way lower than Tesla was spending by a huge margin, maybe 8X. Which is good because Tesla was also delivering 15K points a year while BP thinks they can do 500, meaning Tesla was way more efficient.

Let me quote again what you actually said:


"Tesla laid of 500 people who had a salary over $150M a year"



That indicates the salary of those people was $300k on average. Maybe not what you really meant, but it's what you said ....

 

[texas_star_TM3]

Let me quote again what you actually said:


"Tesla laid of 500 people who had a salary over $150M a year"



That indicates the salary of those people was $300k on average. Maybe not what you really meant, but it's what you said ....

on a corporate side - salaries as cost factor are usually accounted as "all in". which as the other person stated includes taxes, benefits, employer contributions health care etc. I would also assume that the head of the SC team had substantial compensation in stock options.

 

[CWhite]

Wouldn’t it be hilarious if Elon changed his mind and tried to hire some of them back and they were already snatched up

EnviroSpark just got $50M, and it's ready to hire Tesla Supercharger team talent

Thanks to a new $50 million investment, EV charging company EnviroSpark wants to hire as many of the Tesla Supercharger team as possible.

electrek.co

 

[gglockner]

Wouldn’t it be hilarious if Elon changed his mind and tried to hire some of them back and they were already snatched up

EnviroSpark just got $50M, and it's ready to hire Tesla Supercharger team talent

Thanks to a new $50 million investment, EV charging company EnviroSpark wants to hire as many of the Tesla Supercharger team as possible.

electrek.co

"What is Schadenfreude, Alex Ken?"

 

[KJD]

I think I have whiplash. Are the superchargers a priority or not ?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1788834859110002716

 

[gglockner]

I think I have whiplash. Are the superchargers a priority or not ?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1788834859110002716

Who knows?

Musk has grossly overpromised again and again - off the top of my head: capability of Full Self Drive, availability of Cybertruck, Roadster v2, battery swap, robotaxi (and that doesn't include claims for other Musk businesses like solar, X/Twitter, ...). It might happen, but I no longer trust any promise from Musk.

 

[mborkow]

Who knows?

Musk has grossly overpromised again and again - off the top of my head: capability of Full Self Drive, availability of Cybertruck, Roadster v2, battery swap, robotaxi (and that doesn't include claims for other Musk businesses like solar, X/Twitter, ...). It might happen, but I no longer trust any promise from Musk.

His crew of Optimus robots, ferried by robotaxi, are busy getting to work on it now

 

[texas_star_TM3]

I think I have whiplash. Are the superchargers a priority or not ?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1788834859110002716

lol. so per his prior tweet expansion is slowing down with the focus on expanding existing chargers and uptime ... and now he is spending "well over
$500 million" this year alone on expansion with "thousands of new chargers".

"thousands of new chargers" = 2,000 new stalls minimum ("thousands") = assume 12 stalls per average new site = 167+ (!) new Super Charger sites.
but that would mean it's nearly $3 million per new site which is way too high. Assume something closer to $500k+ per new site and we are looking at just under ~1,000 new charger sites.

but then... Elon's word on X is as good as gold. you can totally take that to the bank. Folks - no slow down in expansion - the non existing team will assist with the creation of 200 - 1,000 new Supercharger sites this year. Odd though that the internal email to contractors said to stop all new work and only complete already started projects. they better hurry up with that many SC's being slated for this year per Elon.

 

[gforce2002]

Who knows?

Musk has grossly overpromised again and again - off the top of my head: capability of Full Self Drive, availability of Cybertruck, Roadster v2, battery swap, robotaxi (and that doesn't include claims for other Musk businesses like solar, X/Twitter, ...). It might happen, but I no longer trust any promise from Musk.

That anyone puts any stock into ANYTHING he tweets at this point is remarkable. I automatically assume it's wrong/a lie unless proven by results. I'm still seeing people saying basically "FSD 12.4 is going to be **. Elon said so." Um, based on 12.3.6, that's a giant we'll see.

 

[EatsShoots]

I'm aware this screenshot from Reddit is either a complete misinterpretation by the service center, or is fake, but it tells you a lot that in May 2024, we're really not sure, and it could actually be a thing Elon did, especially after 2019's "Going forward, all expenses of any kind anywhere in the world, including parts, salary, travel expenses, rent, literally every payment that leaves our bank account must be reviewed, confirmed as critical and the top of every page of outgoing payments signed by our CFO. I will personally review and sign every 10th page.":

View attachment 1045618

It's almost believable, but it would be impossible (?) for him to personally approve these so I'm just going to assume this is fake.

 

[MP3Mike]

"thousands of new chargers" = 2,000 new stalls minimum ("thousands") = assume 12 stalls per average new site = 167+ (!) new Super Charger sites.
but that would mean it's nearly $3 million per new site which is way too high. Assume something closer to $500k+ per new site and we are looking at just under ~1,000 new charger sites.

The average number of stalls per new site is ~8.

According to Supercharge.info Tesla has opened approximately 500 sites/expansions so far this year. (~3,500 posts) So it wouldn't surprise me to see about another 500 sites/expansions opened by the end of the year. (Which would be a slowing.)

 

[Genie]

The average number of stalls per new site is ~8.

According to Supercharge.info Tesla has opened approximately 500 sites/expansions so far this year. (~3,500 posts) So it wouldn't surprise me to see about another 500 sites/expansions opened by the end of the year. (Which would be a slowing.)

That would be ~25 new or expanded SC per week to date, is there really that much construction underway?

 

[chinney]

I just do not understand what is going on. Has he fired the Supercharger team, plans on rehiring, and then intends to proceed with a further expansion of the Supercharger network? Or is he perhaps going to reallocate other still-existing Tesla resources to do this? Or is he going to contract out this work? Or did he rethink the Supercharger team layoffs, so that they never actually happened, or at least did not happen to the extent announced? Or is this all just hot air?

 

[MP3Mike]

That would be ~25 new or expanded SC per week to date, is there really that much construction underway?

Just like I said, I got the data from Supercharge.info, you are welcome to look at it yourself: supercharge.info

They currently show 293 under construction and 559 in the planning process:

 

[MP3Mike]

I just do not understand what is going on. Has he fired the Supercharger team, plans on rehiring, and then proceeding with an expansion?

As he said from the beginning, he never planned to stop expansion. It appears that there was just a team that wasn't working like he thought it should, and the director/manager was pushing back and refusing to address his issue. So, he stepped in and started making changes.

 

[stopcrazypp]

The average number of stalls per new site is ~8.

According to Supercharge.info Tesla has opened approximately 500 sites/expansions so far this year. (~3,500 posts) So it wouldn't surprise me to see about another 500 sites/expansions opened by the end of the year. (Which would be a slowing.)

Or we can see 2023:
1,274 (up 6%) New individual connectors (stalls): 12,473 (up 14%) Connectors (stalls) per station on average: 9.8 (up 8%)

https://insideevs.com/news/705972/tesla-supercharging-network-roughly-6000-stations/amp/

Even thousands of stalls can still be a massive slowdown given they installed over 12k last year.

 

[chinney]

As he said from the beginning, he never planned to stop expansion. It appears that there was just a team that wasn't working like he thought it should, and the director/manager was pushing back and refusing to address his issue. So, he stepped in and started making changes.

But how is Tesla going to do this? Who is going to be doing the work?

 

[804son]

"Past performance is no guarantee of future results"

 

[MP3Mike]

But how is Tesla going to do this? Who is going to be doing the work?

Same as always: Tesla employees and contractors. (And yes, they will likely attempt to, or may have already, hired back some of the employees that were let go.)

Or do you think that those ~500 employees were the only employees Tesla had that could possibly get work done?