Despite the fact Tesla CEO Elon Musk laid off pretty much the entire Supercharger team earlier this week, he says the automaker still plans to grow the network… sort of. Musk’s post on his social media site, X, comes just days after reports that the Austin, Texas-based automaker was cutting 500 jobs from its Supercharger unit as well as the group’s leader, Rebecca Tinucci.
“Tesla still plans to grow the Supercharger network, just at a slower pace for new locations and more focus on 100% uptime and expansions of existing locations,” Musk posted on X.
Basically, what I take this to mean is that if you were hoping for a Supercharger station closer to a specification location that isn’t there yet, you’re shit out of luck. This is an absolutely wild decision based purely on the fact that – honestly – Superchargers are winning the EV charging war by a fairly healthy margin. Now, just about every automaker has signed on to make their vehicles compatible with Superchargers and the NACS connector. I just don’t get it, man.
That being said, there will still be some expansion. In response to a Tesla owner who asked if a specific Supercharger location currently under construction in Montana would actually go online, Musk posted. “It’s definitely going to open,” adding that “sites under construction will be completed and we will add additional Superchargers anywhere there are gaps.”
I don’t know, dude. This all screams of cost-cutting desperation to me. How is Tesla going to both maintain and expand its current Supercharger locations while also expanding somewhat into other places? Keep in mind it’ll have to do all that with 500 fewer employees and no head of the ship.
Along with the 500 Supercharger employees and Rebecca Tinucci, senior director of Tesla’s Supercharger business, Musk also laid off Daniel Ho, head of the new vehicles program. So, I guess new Tesla vehicles are going to take a backseat for a while. Who knows? Maybe he was just pissed about the Cybertruck rollout.
Here’s what Musk said to employees in an email about the layoffs, according to Reuters:
“Hopefully these actions are making it clear that we need to be absolutely hard core about headcount and cost reduction,” Musk wrote in the email, the report said. “While some on exec staff are taking this seriously, most are not yet doing so.”
All of this comes on the heels of Tesla unveiling a disastrous first-quarter earnings report as sales continue to fall and the EV price war continues. The automaker posted a quarterly revenue decline for the first time since 2020. Oh, and it laid off 10 percent of its entire workforce a couple of weeks ago. Surely cutting 500 jobs from your most successful unit will solve these issues.