This week, after personally coming to China to promote FSD's entry into China to turn the tide, Musk once again showed whirlwind execution - half a day after the plane from Beijing to the United States landed (late Monday night local time in the United States), Musk suddenly disbanded Tesla's entire supercharging team, involving hundreds of employees around the world, including Rebecca Tinucci, senior director of global supercharging who has worked at Tesla for six years. The decision has not only thrown the industry into confusion and turmoil, which believes that charging stations are one of Tesla's main strengths, but also has created unprecedented uncertainty for businesses and contractors that have been working with Tesla in the construction of charging facilities. Some media have pointed out that this decision may weaken President Biden's efforts to promote electric vehicles in his re-election campaign. At the same time, Trump, the Republican presumed candidate, repeatedly slammed electric vehicles during the campaign and claimed that if he is not elected, the US auto industry will face a serious crisis.
According to reports, some employees of Tesla's supercharging department woke up early on Tuesday morning to find that they had been locked out of the company's system and could only learn of the dismissal through their personal emails. According to people familiar with the matter, the scope of the layoffs is staggering. From executives to employees in charge of sales, to managers in the field who oversee construction on site. This has undoubtedly confused and worried many companies that have a cooperative relationship with Tesla in the construction of charging stations, and they are ignorant of Tesla's future plans in the field of supercharging. Tesla has been a leader in the construction of electric vehicle charging networks in the United States for many years, and in just a few years, it has built the most extensive charging network in the United States with the strongest construction and operation capabilities. Tesla's Supercharger, the only nationwide charging network in the U.S., is seen as a key part of driving public acceptance of electric vehicles, and if Tesla starts slashing its investment in this area now, the entire U.S. electric vehicle market will suffer a major setback. As of March this year, the number of Tesla's supercharging stations increased by about 19% to 1,526, more than four times the number of second-place places, according to EVAdoption. The affected employees seemed to be caught off guard by the sudden layoffs. Some laid off employees revealed that although the company's current business environment is indeed severe, the charging network business has always been regarded as one of the company's key development directions. According to media reports, as recently as mid-April, Mike Snyder, head of Tesla's super battery Megapack business, also revealed in an internal email that Musk believes that the supercharging network is very critical to Tesla's future.
Although Musk later posted on social media that the company is still planning to continue to expand the Supercharger network, the construction of new sites will slow down, and more energy will be used to improve the reliability of existing sites. But this explanation did not dispel the doubts of industry insiders. Some real estate companies and developers who are in talks with Tesla about new charging stations have questioned whether the company is really serious about continuing to invest in charging networks on a large scale. They are worried that if Tesla does significantly slow down the pace of charging network construction, the development process of the entire industry will also be hindered. Tesla's decision to slow down the construction of the charging network is undoubtedly a heavy blow to the entire electric vehicle industry, which also exacerbates the uncertainty of the industry. Last year, due to a short-lived wave of electric vehicle sales, many car companies were in short supply. However, a few months later, due to the slowdown in sales, traditional automakers, including GM and Ford, cut their EV production plans and increased their efforts to launch hybrid models instead. While there is overcapacity on the supply side, another important reason restricting the growth of electric vehicle sales is the lag in the current construction of electric vehicle infrastructure, which makes consumers feel unassured about whether they can easily charge electric vehicles anytime, anywhere. A charging network with wide coverage, fast charging speeds, and a stable and reliable network is essential to attract consumers to electric vehicle adoption. Previously, Tesla's Supercharger was expected to be high, but now, the leading company has not only significantly slowed down the pace of expansion of its charging network, but even the team in charge of operations has suffered a serious impact. In the context of the slowdown in the development of the electric vehicle industry and the overall downturn, Tesla's sudden tightening of investment in charging infrastructure construction is undoubtedly like pouring cold water on the industry. Some agencies specializing in EV charging have expressed disappointment, fearing that Tesla's contraction in the supercharging business will cause market turmoil in the short term and hit the entire process of improving the EV charging network in the United States. At the same time, some companies engaged in the construction of charging infrastructure believe that Tesla's slowdown may create opportunities for other companies to enter this field, which is conducive to the formation of a healthier and more dynamic industry competition pattern in the long run. However, for some companies that originally had a cooperative relationship with Tesla in the construction of charging stations, Tesla's hard-core pace of layoffs undoubtedly made them feel great uncertainty and a crisis of confidence. A developer told the media that they had been in talks with Tesla for seven or eight months to lease a supercharging station in Queens, New York, and were about to sign a contract, but suddenly received news at 4 a.m. on Tuesday that the team involved in the project had been disbanded, and Tesla did not send anyone to contact him on how to move forward with the follow-up work. A supplier in Texas who was building a supercharging station for Tesla was suddenly told that more than 20 employees who worked with them had left their jobs, and that the email address they had previously communicated with had been changed to "invalid", and Tesla had also not contacted them to discuss the follow-up cooperation. Some developers have bluntly said that Tesla's capricious and lack of credibility makes it difficult for them to see it as a trustworthy partner anymore.
The Biden administration's "500,000 charging piles" plan may be affected US President Joe Biden wants to help the development of electric vehicles and battery manufacturing in the United States, so he passed some laws and policies. For example, he introduced a climate bill called the Inflation Reduction Act, which provides tax incentives to encourage companies to produce electric vehicles and batteries in the United States. In addition, Biden signed a bill, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, and plans to invest $7.5 billion to build these charging stations. In February 2023, President Biden tweeted, "As we build our EV charging network, we must ensure that there are as many chargers as possible so that drivers, regardless of the brand of EV, can find a charging station to charge their vehicles." To this end, Musk agreed to open up most of Tesla's network of charging stations. It's a big deal, and it's going to have a huge impact. ”
But Tesla Inc. recently laid off about 500 employees on its Supercharger team, a move that raises questions about whether the Biden administration will meet its goal of building a nationwide network of 500,000 EV charging stations. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to comment on Tesla's specific decision, but she said that although Tesla is a major company, the U.S. government does not rely entirely on Tesla when it comes to promoting electric vehicles. There are a lot of companies contributing to the EV market in the U.S., not just one company, and it's a growing and competitive market. ⭐ Star Wall Street news, good content do not miss ⭐ This article does not constitute personal investment advice, does not represent the views of the platform, the market is risky, investment needs to be cautious, please make independent judgment and decision-making.