Tesla was on the verge of taking over electric vehicle charging in the US – then there were layoffs.
Multiple media outlets reported today that the company has laid off hundreds of employees, just weeks after cutting 10 percent (approximately 14,000 employees) of its global workforce. Tesla’s Supercharger division is said to have been particularly hard hit. Several soon-to-be former employees said nearly the entire team had been laid off.
Accordingly The information, Rebecca Tinucci, Tesla’s senior director of electric vehicle charging, is leaving the company along with most of the 500-person team she led. Tinucci led the effort to win near-universal support from other automakers for Tesla’s North American Charging Standard (NACS), a tremendous achievement that earned her a spot on the TIME100 Climate list MotorTrend‘s “Power List” as noted by Electrics.
Tesla’s Supercharger division was particularly hard hit
It all started in November 2022, when Tesla announced that it would open its electric vehicle charging connector and network to other automakers. The idea was to give the rest of the industry access to Tesla’s more reliable Supercharger stations at a time when charging electric vehicles is a delicate and precarious endeavor – while also giving the company access to billions of dollars in federal funding for future charging infrastructure make possible.
First came Ford, then GM, then everyone else. Most recently, two global automakers, Volkswagen Group and Stellantis, were the latest – and final – to announce that they would adopt Tesla’s charging standard for their future electric vehicles.
Tesla’s decision to lay off almost its entire Supercharger team at its moment of triumph could signal a change in strategy. For example, Electrics also reported that the company exited four leases for new charging stations in the New York City area. But those affected by today’s cuts said they were caught off guard by the news.
“Wow, this is real. I can’t 100% confirm that the entire Tesla #TeslaCharging organization was laid off, but my team and I definitely were,” wrote William Navarro Jameson, head of strategic charging programs, on his LinkedIn profile. “As I try to piece together more, I’ll share what I can.”
Jameson later wrote down
“If Tesla gives up the charging crown,” he added, “who will step in?”
George Bahadue, senior manager of site acquisition and business development for Tesla’s commercial charging program, also said on LinkedIn that he had been fired. “This is not the end for the Supercharger team, it is the beginning of a new chapter,” he wrote.
“If Tesla gives up the charging crown, who will step in?”
Tesla’s Supercharger network is widely considered superior to many third-party EV charging stations, most of which feature CCS plugs and the lesser-used CHAdeMO charging standard. The company says it has 45,000 Superchargers worldwide, including 12,000 in the United States.
In its most recent earnings report, Tesla said it installed 6,249 Supercharger stations with 57,579 ports in the first three months of 2024. Station installations increased 26 percent year-on-year, while the number of connections increased 27 percent. This was a rare area of growth for the company, which has seen its sales and profits decline since last year as demand for electric vehicles cooled.
Electric vehicle charging remains a sore point for the entire industry. Numerous surveys show consumer concerns about charging levels in the United States. Many assume that EV adoption would improve significantly with better and more reliable charging.
During that earnings call, Elon Musk showed little regard for Tesla’s automotive division, preferring to aggressively tout the company’s newfound status as an AI company and promote its efforts to produce a fully autonomous robotaxi. The future is bright, he emphasized, because Tesla will “solve autonomy.”
How many times did the topic of “electric vehicle charging” or “Tesla’s Supercharger” come up during the hour-long call? Zero.