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?

 

[ucmndd]

Musk does crazy things but Tesla continues to survive in spite of him.

I think this is exactly the right sentiment... "in spite of".

There were a lot of early years where Tesla survived because of him, but that's just not the case any more. The company would be better off without him in 2024.

 

[Dear_OP]

I think stuff like this is not overnight and certainly done in isolation. IRL it takes weeks if not months of prep work requiring senior level agreements. Elon Musk is not Cobra Commander nor Palpatine despite the media narratives.
I agree that firing Supercharger dept makes little sense. However I think there is a roadmap for SC (and other Tesla futures) with certain levers moved upon specific milestones achieved. My brain is too small to figure that one out.

Gonna wait and see...

 

[ThomasD]

Maybe Musk is getting ready to slowly sell off bits and pieces of his companies? He fired the development Team did he also fire the Technicians that fix the Chargers? Maybe Musk is going to have employees cross train into every aspect of the company. One day you are in a Service Center repairing cars. The next day you could be repairing and installing Superchargers.

 

[HitchHiker71]

I think stuff like this is not overnight and certainly done in isolation. IRL it takes weeks if not months of prep work requiring senior level agreements. Elon Musk is not Cobra Commander nor Palpatine despite the media narratives.
I agree that firing Supercharger dept makes little sense. However I think there is a roadmap for SC (and other Tesla futures) with certain levers moved upon specific milestones achieved. My brain is too small to figure that one out.

Gonna wait and see...

Musk just had an investors call last week - he could have provided context for the upcoming layoffs then - to the investors in the company - but he did one of two things. Either he chose not to, or he actually didn't hatch these plans until this week. Neither seems like a good business practice for a chief executive running a large cap firm IMHO. One involves zero communication, the other involves last minute decision making. He literally had everyone's attention just a few business days ago on the investors call - why not get out ahead of huge changes like this and provide some context to the people that OWN the company? The lack of communication staggers someone like me.

 

[LostVector]

I am also alarmed by Musk firing the whole team. However it's ironic to see everyone on here be so dramatically emotional and blaming Musk for the same thing.

Look - we don't know what's next. Musk has made highly questionable decisions in the past that have panned out in the end. It may be that he's unhappy with the v4 rollout, or that from an energy perspective Teslas are falling behind in charging curves and other areas and he's found another company that will deal with it. Or maybe he's burning it all down just to build it back up fresh.

We don't know. It's not even been 24 hours yet. Speculation on this side is just as bad.

I'm not seeing a generous take on Elon's action here, to be frank. We don't know if there's something going on behind the scenes, of course, but if Elon is so out of his mind as to not understand that cutting the entire supercharger team needs additional context, then he's still acting crazy. Not to mention the entire US car industry is switching to NACS ... there must have been agreements or plans with the other car makers to build MORE superchargers, not less. And certainly not NONE.

 

[KelvinMace]

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?

Why would Tesla sell off the crown jewel of its company. The one area that is head and shoulders above every other thing they do? The one division that other auto companies are lining up to pour money into Tesla's coffers? This smacks of a drug fueled temper tantrum.

 

[KelvinMace]

TIL, so I had to look for it. I see Tesla conducting more layoffs, including entire Supercharger team reporting this.

Perhaps they're trying to outsource this? I know Black & Veatch has worked with Tesla before with their US Supercharger network but I don't know about the current and recent level of involvement.
https://www.bv.com/tesla-supercharger-us-build-out/

Black & Veatch, SAI Group Hired To Build 2,000 EV Stations

Black & Veatch and SAI Group will build a coast-to-coast network of more than 2,000 fast-charging electric vehicle stations for Electrify America.

www.enr.com

https://www.bv.com/projects/partnering-tesla-construct-largest-contiguous-electric-vehicle-charging-system-world/

Outsourcing is the death of customer service.

 

[ThomasD]

Just my opinion but it seams that Tesla maybe low on Cash. Should Investors demand an audit of the company?

 

[KelvinMace]

If something really extreme happens at Tesla, have we figured out if we can block any kind of catastrophic update from being installed without otherwise hosing the functionality of the car--functionality such as navigation with traffic, infotainment, etc. (pretty much anything that requires an internet connection.) I hope it's as simple as refusing any update and using my phone as a hotspot, as much of a PITA as that would be.

More to the subject of this thread, is it me or would the SC team be the least technical/skilled of all of them? I mean, obviously it's complex and requires all sorts of intelligence, training, education and experience. But if you're going to send the message (crazy as this tactic is), maybe this is the team you can most easily replace?

I feel like Elon is just too smart to screw this up that bad in a rash decision. He must have a plan. Not that I will like the plan, and not that the plan will be good for Tesla owners! But he must have one. Maybe there are 500 engineers in China that we just hired?

You feel like Elon is "too smart to screw this up". Have you been paying attention the last few years? Elon's conduct has been anything but rational for some time now.

 

[E90alex]

Musk does crazy things but Tesla continues to survive in spite of him.

But for how much longer? There’s bound to be a breaking point.

 

[fholbert]

Don't remember the thread, but several months ago I said it wouldn't surprise me Musk shutdown everything and just walked away someday. He's that kind of guy.

 

[zroger73]

Why would Tesla sell off the crown jewel of its company. The one area that is head and shoulders above every other thing they do? The one division that other auto companies are lining up to pour money into Tesla's coffers? This smacks of a drug fueled temper tantrum.

From a Time story last year:

Tesla’s creation of a vast new EV charging business was, apparently, an accident. The debate over how to build charging infrastructure has raged since the early days of electric vehicles. Will people just charge up at home? How much are consumers willing to pay to recharge? Should governments build and operate a charging network? Amid this debate, Tesla went ahead and built its own network, not to turn charging into a profit center but rather to reassure buyers that they could get across the country without running out of power.

Just 12 years ago, there was a single Tesla Supercharger location in the US. Today, there are 2,257 Supercharger locations and there are 9,717 total fast charging locations in the US.

Tesla aims for ~10% profitability from Superchargers. A year and a half ago, they gave away their proprietary connector which has since become the industry-standard. This encourages competition from other charging networks.

EV charging competition will force down profitability - possibly to the level of gas stations, which don't exist to make money off of gas, but rather off of food and beverages while people are refueling.

 

[texas_star_TM3]

Elon's tweet that they'll focus on 100% uptime of existing charging locations and expanding those doesn't make me feel better .... because expanding existing locations isn't that easy and there's still plenty routes out there i presently can't drive in my Model 3 AWD. Dallas-Ft.Worth to Ruidoso / NM for example. Charging desert after Lubbock ....

 

[texas_star_TM3]

But for how much longer? There’s bound to be a breaking point.

pumping out millions of new EVs while not expanding service center network for example is a main headache. North Texas SC's are backlogged by *weeks* for bigger repairs...

 

[texas_star_TM3]

Maybe Musk is getting ready to slowly sell off bits and pieces of his companies? He fired the development Team did he also fire the Technicians that fix the Chargers? Maybe Musk is going to have employees cross train into every aspect of the company. One day you are in a Service Center repairing cars. The next day you could be repairing and installing Superchargers.

yeah. so you hold a dual certification as car mechanic as well as electrician... sounds logical

 

[texas_star_TM3]

let's also be ready for those "coming in XXX" stations marked on the supercharger map to not happen or not happen anytime soon (unless there's a permit filed already)

 

[CobaltLights]

I’d hate to think what would happen if Musk became even more unhinged and, say, took down functioning supercharger locations. Time for intervention by the Feds?

 

[Mr. Nuke]

let's also be ready for those "coming in XXX" stations marked on the supercharger map to not happen or not happen anytime soon (unless there's a permit filed already)

Not necessarily even for permitted sites. Permits are relatively cheap in the grand scheme of things. Sprint prior to getting bought out by T-Mobile for example had a habit of continually walking away from cellphone tower upgrade permits when they didn't have the cash to do so only to file new permits and repeat the process all over again.

Sources familiar with the matter told Electrek that Tesla backed out of four leases for upcoming Supercharger locations in New York: one in Maspeth, South Bronx, two in Queens, and one in Gateway Center, Brooklyn

Tesla is already pulling back Supercharger plans after firing team

Tesla is already pulling back Supercharger plans after Elon Musk came in like a wrecking ball and fired the whole...

electrek.co

 

[gearchruncher]

More to the subject of this thread, is it me or would the SC team be the least technical/skilled of all of them? I mean, obviously it's complex and requires all sorts of intelligence, training, education and experience. But if you're going to send the message (crazy as this tactic is), maybe this is the team you can most easily replace?

I feel like Elon is just too smart to screw this up that bad in a rash decision. He must have a plan. Not that I will like the plan, and not that the plan will be good for Tesla owners! But he must have one. Maybe there are 500 engineers in China that we just hired?

You're assuming the people he fired design supercharger hardware. While that is true, that's the least interesting part of what they do in 2024.

This team identified sites where SC's were needed, worked with local governments, landowners, and power companies to make it all happen. Permits, public meetings, economic plans, traffic flow analysis. They negotiated power rates as economic situations changed. Then once up and running, they made sure the superchargers were maintained and the leasees and governments stayed happy. They modeled demand curves to understand what to charge. They worked with other manufacturers to make NACS a reality.

In the end this team was much more about politics and infrastructure than engineering.

This is not something you can outsource to 500 people in China, nor something that you can just put a random American in charge of and train them in a week or month. It was this literal lived experience that made this team valuable, and likely even the people they knew.

 

[zroger73]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1785406795814510785