Tesla fires entire Supercharger team. Elon Musk says Supercharger growth will continue however

[feye]

It's how Tesla shows their cash at the of the quarter. It looks good on paper, only if you have increased sales every quarter.
One bad quarter, they have to scramble to cut costs and FAST.
Cut cost at every angle to keep the company running. They just cut their revolutionary GigaCasting, more top executives left today.

Expect another At The Money stock offering for "AI' and Robotaxis very soon.

I've read that the European boss for charging network also left and is now the boss for IONITY in Europe. Sinking ship, and will altogether disapear in a few years...

I also bet, that EA will not change their network to another adapter. Not worth it...

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[Tooney]

Even Tesla's harshest critics must concede that the company's Supercharger network is its star asset. Tesla has more fast chargers in operation than anyone else, and this year opened them up to other automakers, which are adopting the J3400 plug standard.​

All of which makes the decision to get rid of senior director of EV charging Rebecca Tinucci—along with her entire team—a bit of a head-scratcher. If I were the driver of a non-Tesla EV expecting to get access to Superchargers this year, I'd probably expect this to result in some friction. Musk told workers that Tesla "will continue to build out some new Supercharger locations, where critical, and finish those currently under construction."​

Tesla to lay off everyone working on Superchargers, new vehicles Tesla is also getting rid of its public policy team, despite robotaxi ambitions. - Arstechnia

 

[ShiftyWolf]

[From the original article:]

...If I were the driver of a non-Tesla EV expecting to get access to Superchargers this year, I'd probably expect this to result in some friction.​

​

Yeah.....

 

[kort]

Honestly, they cannot sell the junk anymore,

a rational person would think that they would need to provide the service to the hundreds of thousands of current owners.
maybe in communinst china where the government is heavily subsidizing their domestic auto industry tesla is unable to sell many cars but in the rest of the world tesla is still selling many vehicles.

 

[CaliPorsche]

Interesting developments and an interesting discussion thread ….. I will offer a couple more possible factors.

First - I do not think Musk deals well with being shaded, Rebecca Tinucci has been getting a lot of credit for the recent success of the TSCN, and I hear getting more ambitious.

Secondly - and in my view more importantly, he has a far bigger agenda item that could transform the Tesla cost base and create its own global market much bigger than the EV market. That agenda requires cash flow that he cannot get from the shareholder or free cash flow or right now, without the tax incentives, the supercharger network is not able to expand physically and produce cash (expanding usage of the existing infrastructure has a much higher NPV, so it makes sense now to constrain supply when he has already massively increased demand).

I see some of the sniggering taking place around robots and AI, but the Tesla Optimus General Purpose Robot (GPR) is potentially way more impactful than anything he has done so far …… and it needs a lot of cash to reach its potential.

I recently served on the board of a startup that is a leader in this space, a competitor to Optimus and (IMHO) further advanced than Optimus (for now.). I strongly believe the GPR market is simply huge (and of course controversial), and despite what the media would have us believe does not need to reach sentience or achieve consciousness to be viable as a product.

Can you imagine what it does to the Tesla production process to be able to complete the vast majority of assembly and supply chain activities in a factory with zero human labor or union concerns. As I said a lot of controversy and I’m not sure I would want all of that capability monopoly or too far ahead of any competition and in the hands of someone like musk, but I can tell you from firsthand experience that a viable real world GPR product is much more advanced than some people would imagine. Then imagine what happens if GPR as a product becomes generally available for a lot of labor intensive or dangerous activities. A market with no ceiling

If you haven’t already - go research GPR and take a look at Optimus (try and get over the circus show and a lot of the gimmicks), look at the AI aspect of what they are doing to achieve human like capabilities in a GPR. Look at a lot of the transferable technology from a Tesla software perspective to a GPR perspective, especially in things like autonomous driving.

In my view, Optimus is the next Tesla focus item, and if he does pull it off ahead of any competition is a massive market that changes space travel, Tesla manufacturing and can impact almost every other aspect of life. And I do not think the AI capabilities when controlling physical aspects of a GPR are very far from being marketable, ignore the media stuff about sentience as I believe that is a distraction.

I am not an Elon fan. I am not an insider, but I am intrigued about what is happening here and the complex connections and overlaps of his tangential business models over his career.

 

[Tooney]

Tesla layoffs shake confidence in the EV-charging future - E&ENews by Politico

“It feels like the rug just got pulled out from under a lot of the industry alignment that has been built in the last 12 months,” said Matt Teske, an industry veteran and CEO of Chargeway, an EV-charging software platform. “And leaves us on shaky ground.”

The abrupt decision left the ever-widening ecosystem of people who rely on Tesla — drivers, automakers, suppliers, electric utilities and policymakers — suddenly in the lurch, as emails to longtime Tesla contacts bounced and the most respected team in the industry all but ceased to exist.
. . .
“What’s the plan, what’s the strategy, and at such a pivotal moment, why are they bailing on that entire team?” asked Jonathan Katz, an EV-charging executive who was part of Tesla’s charging unit for five years ending in 2020.

Will Tesla drivers — and now other EV drivers — be able to continue to rely on the network that was one of the main perks about buying a Tesla? Will the automakers who bet their future EVs on Tesla’s charging stations and technology still have a reliable partner? Will Tesla be there to guide an industrywide transition to the technology that it invented? And will Tesla continue to participate in the federal build-out of charging stations — an effort that, until this week, it was leading?
. . .
The news, while startling, struck some as a canny move — perhaps one that reflects the maturing EV sector, where more players are coming onto the scene and can take over the charging tasks that Tesla has, until now, managed mostly by itself.

Musk “clearly looked at what needs to be done to build out the Supercharging network, and it is probably a lot less than what it took to design and plan it,” said Karl Brauer, an auto analyst for the car-sales website iSeeCars.com.
. . .
With Tesla’s charging expertise now disbanded, the players who relied on it face uncertain circumstances.

One example is state departments of transportation, which are now in the process of determining what companies will win awards to build charging stations under the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program. The $5 billion, five-year arm of the bipartisan infrastructure law aims to build a backbone of charging stations along highways.

Tesla, already a winner of roughly 14 percent of these awards, is poised to pick up more in states that have announced tentative winners.

But with Tesla removing itself from the market, “your decision is more complicated all the sudden,” said Loren McDonald, the founder of EVAdoption, an EV-charging data platform that tracks NEVI. With Tesla newly bereft of staff, she said, “What do you do?”

Even more consequential choices might face automakers, which are planning to install Tesla’s NACS technology in their cars starting next year.

In theory, Tesla’s competitors can operate the new charging platform without Tesla’s help. But in practice, Tesla is —or was — the one with the most expertise, and without it, the new EV charging systems could be less reliable.

“It leaves a lot of questions: Are these automakers still going to get the level of support they were promised?” asked Katz, the former Tesla charging employee.

 

[thecoloradokid]

In my view, Optimus is the next Tesla focus item, and if he does pull it off ahead of any competition is a massive market that changes space travel, Tesla manufacturing and can impact almost every other aspect of life. And I do not think the AI capabilities when controlling physical aspects of a GPR are very far from being marketable, ignore the media stuff about sentience as I believe that is a distraction.

I am all for this if it means there will be a robot at a charging location to plug in my EV when it is cold, snowing, or raining!!!!!!!!

 

[Jonathan S.]

^ That's a good piece, thanks for posting.

This part though is somewhat misleading:

One example is state departments of transportation, which are now in the process of determining what companies will win awards to build charging stations under the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program. The $5 billion, five-year arm of the bipartisan infrastructure law aims to build a backbone of charging stations along highways.​

Tesla, already a winner of roughly 14 percent of these awards, is poised to pick up more in states that have announced tentative winners.​

The latest tally I've seen -- which could be incomplete, outdated, or otherwise inaccurate -- is that
Tesla has won only $17 million so far in state-awarded NEVI funding.
For a company of Tesla's size, that is utterly trivial.

Makes you wonder whether Tesla concluded that pursuing funding from 50 different states just isn't worth the bother ... as well as wondering why any state DOT would choose anyone else over Tesla.
(Especially given that the competition is far more expensive than Tesla and is almost always proposing immediately inadequate four-charger stations. Along with lacking Tesla's established track record for charger reliability.)

But perhaps this will create opportunities for other for-profit networks (i.e., not EA).
For example, check out all the latest exciting updates from the big JV:
https://ionna.com/news

 

[Tooney]

But perhaps this will create opportunities for other for-profit networks (i.e., not EA).
For example, check out all the latest exciting updates from the big JV:
https://ionna.com/news

I checked it out, and uh oh:

 

[Jonathan S.]

Agreed!

Although prior experience in a specialized industry can of course be good, both EV Connect and EA are such miserable half-hearted ventures with indifference toward reliability that the corporate culture there must make for an undesirable professional background.
Perhaps during his tenure he was chafing at the restrictions imposed upon him and wants to get it right this time, but .... we'll see.

Either way, we will have to wait a long time judging by this:
https://app.trinethire.com/companies/324552-ionna-llc/jobs
... as they still lack two regional site acquisition managers, three deployment senior managers, and even a general counsel. All of which indicates no significant station deployments until well into 2025, i.e., two years after the JV was announced with much fanfare.

 

[kort]

I am not an Elon fan. I am not an insider, but I am intrigued about what is happening here and the complex connections and overlaps of his tangential business models over his career.

Elon seems to run about 3 steps ahead of most of us.
I am confident that there is a plan, whether the plan pans out is unknown at this time

 

[Mr.Smith]

I am all for this if it means there will be a robot at a charging location to plug in my EV when it is cold, snowing, or raining!!!!!!!!

Tesla did this, stole millions, never produced anything they promised.

Optimus was something Musk conjured up while watching people drool over a Boston Dynamics video on Twitter. FYI Boston Dynamics was purchased for $1b by Hyundai so that's Musks best case valuation.


They are a car company, with 93% of income coming from making cars, with 3 underutilized factories, no new cars in the pipeline.

 

[snstevens]

@daveo4EV - I didn't think I'd have to invite you to this thread, but now I will

What is your take on the future of charging standards and infrastructure given Tesla's latest move?

 

[d00d]

MB is further along in autonomous driving, achieving L3 before Tesla.
Much of Tesla EV success so far has been from enthusiasts, but now that market has largely been satiated, and there are more compelling EVs to choose from.
The SC network will still exist, but the first job of a company is to stay in business, cost cutting is sometimes necessary.
Other companies are working on robots, he isn't the first mover like he was in EVs.

 

[CaliPorsche]

Other companies are working on robots, he isn't the first mover like he was in EVs.

Read my comments in the context of GPR, not simply “robots” - where the current effort is largely AI, (and not just LLM AI) ……. but physical interpretation and actuation with AI and the development of the physical assets and inner world modeling to facilitate that …… not many companies are doing that …..two or three and Optimus is close to the lead ….. GPR is a whole new technology Category …… and as someone that has been involved in this category the last few years raising interest and funds …. I can tell you not yet well understood ……

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