Report: Tesla lays off entire Supercharger team! [Update: Elon Musk says supercharger growth will continue]

[HaulingAss]

Elon's contribution to electrification in general and to Tesla specifically has been enormous, if not incalculable. And he can continue to contribute without holding the CEO title. I would argue that he might contribute even more effectively without the burden of being a corporate officer.

I think Tesla will be fine either way, but some have legitimate concerns with Elon, including large shareholders that obviously do not want to tear down the company. Taking issue with his actions does not make you an "anti-muskite".

I think people under-estimate how important good vision is to being an effective CEO. Vision is the ability to see the market before it develops, to know what people will buy, before they buy it. No ther CEO would have green-lighted Musk's Cybertruck, Elon had to be CEO to make Cybertruck happen. Without Elon as CEO, I would not have a Cybertruck sitting in my driveway, the most stupendously awesome pickup I've ever driven.

Never under-estimate the power of having good vision. That's something you can't learn, you either have it or not. Elon has it. The people who are critical of him are conventional and boring. They simply don't get it.

 

[HaulingAss]

Projects need continuity. Employees are valuable resources. You lose them, you lose institutional knowledge.

CEOs are not so valuable.

-Crissa

That's some woke thinking right there!

The CEO is an employee, and the most valuable one at that!

Not every employee is valuable, some are worth even less to the company than what they are paid. Those are the ones who should be fired. I've worked alongside plenty of people my bosses would have been better off without but that my bosses were too spineless to fire them. Sometimes they did fire them, and moral immediately improved.

Companies that are too afraid to fire their weakest employees turn into weak companies and encourage under-performance by the rest. Someone has to have the balls to set the minimum acceptable productivity or we will turn into a third world country.

 

[Crissa]

That's some woke thinking right there!

The CEO is an employee, and the most valuable one at that!

No.

It's a job that doesn't really require experience or education.

But that's not the point. The point is this specific CEO just crippled another company and the board should fire his ass for doing it.

-Crissa

 

[JBee]

That's some woke thinking right there!

The CEO is an employee, and the most valuable one at that!

Not every employee is valuable, some are worth even less to the company than what they are paid. Those are the ones who should be fired. I've worked alongside plenty of people my bosses would have been better off without but that my bosses were too spineless to fire them. Sometimes they did fire them, and moral immediately improved.

Companies that are too afraid to fire their weakest employees turn into weak companies and encourage under-performance by the rest. Someone has to have the balls to set the minimum acceptable productivity or we will turn into a third world country.

Exactly, a bad employee has poor individual performance which a detriment to those that have good performance.

It's quite literally weeding out the bad eggs.

Plus, the department proably wasn't profitable either, as discussed previously, and so that was the least amount of employees that needed to be fired for the best net effect for the company.

Simply the whole department was redundant...if there were any skills, then they would have to reapply to a different department anyway.

Like this they were forced to.

Plus a good motivator for the other departments and an extra buffer for a tough global market situation ahead, that doesn't really need a lot more SCs.

 

[Crissa]

Simply the whole department was redundant...if there were any skills, then they would have to reapply to a different department anyway.

...

Plus a good motivator for the other departments and an extra buffer for a tough global market situation ahead, that doesn't really need a lot more SCs.

Ahh, yes, the 'institutional knowledge isn't important' and 'we don't need to expand EV adoption because we're making sure the global market will be bad'.

Yeah. Just top-tier ignorance of economics.

-Crissa

 

[JBee]

That's some woke thinking right there!

The CEO is an employee, and the most valuable one at that!

No.

It's a job that doesn't really require experience or education.

But that's not the point. The point is this specific CEO just crippled another company and the board should fire his ass for doing it.

-Crissa

You are proving his point, in that you are unqualified to make a call to sack a CEO at all, let alone purely on emotional grounds.

 

[Crissa]

You are proving his point, in that you are unqualified to make a call to sack a CEO at all, let alone purely on emotional grounds.

Yep.

Because totally a CEO should cripple a company by firing everyone like some sort of child's tantrum.

Uhh, no.

-Crissa

 

[JBee]

Yep.

Because totally a CEO should cripple a company by firing everyone like some sort of child's tantrum.

Uhh, no.

-Crissa

You obviously don't understand the reality of the actual "importance" of the charging department.

You are making the charging department more important than it actually is.

You don't even know what parts of the department were fired...but you sure have a HUGE opinion on who is to blame even though nothing has happened, and you making up a story how this will end the the world EV development!

Sheesh. Bring some facts first. So we have something worth discussing.

 

[Crissa]

You obviously don't understand the reality of the actual "importance" of the charging department.

Yes.

It's essential for adoption for there to be chargers in everyone's town.

It's essential for adoption for there to be chargers at every rural highway interchange.

It's essential for adoption for there to be chargers at all the hotels.

And this has crippled that. Sales will suffer.

This is straight up: He is making the situation in which they will sell fewer units.

-Crissa

 

[charliemagpie]

I suspect this has been on the cards for a lot longer than we think.
Over the last 6 months, (AU)I have been checking the Supercharger map for updates. The map should be updated every 3 months.

From a usual over a dozen planned new locations to just 3 today.

 

[JBee]

Yes.

It's essential for adoption for there to be chargers in everyone's town.

It's essential for adoption for there to be chargers at every rural highway interchange.

It's essential for adoption for there to be chargers at all the hotels.

And this has crippled that. Sales will suffer.

This is straight up: He is making the situation in which they will sell fewer units.

-Crissa

There is no reason to have chargers at every intersection etc etc. It's not only wasteful, but actually makes it more likely that the charger location goes bust because they can't make ends meet for capex alone.

You don't understand how much chargers cost, (more than a M3 each port) and how much they make in return. ROI is over +5 years. Thats why you donsee other manufacturers rolling them out.

The rule of thumb is that nearly each vehicle is charged at home every night, so accordingly you need far fewer charging stations than you do gas stations, simply because most of the commuting is done frofilling g up from home.

Conversely, nearly nobody with ICE fills at home every night.

Chargers are predominantly for pass through traffic.

You'd have to do some statistics on what the charger utilisation is, I'd expect less than 20% of EV charging kWh come from SC chargers, the rest, being 80% from houses overnight charging.

Thats a huge shift away from "gas" or "charging" staions all together.

Do you have some numbers on what charger density per EV per sq mile you need?

With that you'd have a better picture.

 

[fhteagle]

They're really cleaning house.

Cleaning house is a careful process, deciding what to keep and what needs to go based on the merit of each thing or employee.

The way Musk did this would be the equivalent of cleaning house via the enough matches and gasoline to burn down the neighborhood method.

 

[kev12345]

You obviously don't understand the reality of the actual "importance" of the charging department.

You are making the charging department more important than it actually is.

You don't even know what parts of the department were fired...but you sure have a HUGE opinion on who is to blame even though nothing has happened, and you making up a story how this will end the the world EV development!

Sheesh. Bring some facts first. So we have something worth discussing.

Perception is reality. I would bet most people feel fast reliable public charging is pretty important when considering an EV.

Axing the charging group at a time when you’re trying to convince the other automakers to switch to your system is just plain horrible timing.

 

[JBee]

Well Tesla has 140,000 employees and the charging dept. is 500...thats 0.4%

Whoopdeedo.

I don't think it's meaningful, technically they'd have that amount of personnel turnover every month, if not every few weeks.

 

[Idea Of The Day]

Is anyone asking the logical questions?

Are Superchargers profitable at all?

There are two elements to this:

1) return on investment
2) power puchase costs

If its low margin, and Tesla is boarding up the windows for a hard time ahead, wouldn't you focus of trimming the least profitable parts of your organisation?

I done a mini study a while ago, and numbers are thin, hence prevalent government subsidies are required to install chargers at all.

Most charging in kWh and $ is done at home, not on the street on a long trip.

It's a weak business model best left for others to do.

There's still quite a bit of money on the table for companies to profit from charging, but that's only a small part of the story. Tesla still offers free chargers to many of their early adopters for life because they originally didn't build those chargers to earn money from the power.

Those chargers are what made people feel comfortable buying their cars in the first place.

Like many EV drivers, I charge at home 99% of the time. The kicker is the remaining 1% is when you travel long distances. Without the SuperCharger Network, Tesla never would've grown in the first place.

SuperChargers and DC Fast Chargers in general are literally the most essential thing to widespread EV adoption. If you ask anyone who is afraid to switch to an EV why they won't buy one, they will all say they worry about running out of power, especially when they travel.

The Fast Charger market is growing quickly. While it's not essential that Tesla dominate that space because there are more players entering each day, the fact is when people see that bright red SuperCharger, they feel more comfortable buying a Tesla.