(Image source: Photo.com)
On April 29, local time, after Tesla founder Elon Musk returned to the United States from his visit to China, he laid off the entire team of Rebecca Tinucci (Rebecca Tinucci), the head of Tesla's supercharging team, and Daniel Ho, the head of new products, overnight, and the number of employees involved in the layoffs was as high as about 500 people. At the time, Musk's decision to lay off employees shocked the entire electric vehicle industry, because the supercharger is arguably one of Tesla's most forward-looking products and is the company's "golden signboard".
At present, Tesla has established more than 6,200 charging stations around the world, with more than 57,000 charging heads, and last year it accounted for 8% of the global public charging demand.
However, the reason for Musk's decisive layoffs does not seem to be simple. According to industry analysts, there may be multiple factors behind this, such as technical progress is not as expected, market competition is fierce and it is difficult to make profits. Tesla's Superchargers are facing increasing competitive pressure in Europe and the United States, and profitability has not met the company's expectations.
However, just when people thought Tesla was going to abandon the supercharging business altogether, things took a dramatic turn. According to the latest report from Bloomberg, Tesla Inc. has begun to rehire some of the Supercharger team. The highest-ranking rehire is Max de Zegher, director of North American charging, who was once one of the subordinates of senior director Rebecca Tinucci, who was fired last month.
Immediately rehired after a major layoff? Musk's "repeated operations" shocked netizens. In this regard, some netizens commented: "Compensation will be paid for dismissal, and then recruited and dismissed", "Re-employed, salary has been reduced!!" The number of people is small!! The staff was obedient!! Kill three birds with one stone!", "God operates! First all employees are laid off, and then the best are selected"
In the highly competitive electric vehicle market, Tesla's every step touches the nerves of the industry. As the soul of the company, Musk's every decision will greatly affect Tesla's future direction.
As an important part of the new energy vehicle industry, the charging pile industry is ushering in vigorous growth with the rapid development of the new energy vehicle market. Driven by the growth of electric vehicle sales, the market size of charging piles continues to expand, technology continues to innovate, and market competition is becoming increasingly fierce. At the same time, the charging pile industry is also facing challenges such as accelerating the construction of supporting facilities and improving charging speed and endurance to meet the growing demand for charging services from new energy vehicle users.
Looking back at the charging pile industry:
The demand gap for electric vehicle charging piles is expanding, and there is huge room for growth in the future
In 2015, the "Guidelines for the Development of Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure" stipulated that 4.8 million charging piles would be built by 2020 to meet the charging needs of 5 million new energy vehicles, including 500,000 public charging piles and 4.3 million private charging piles, with a vehicle-to-pile ratio of 1:1. However, the current construction of the charging network is far behind the plan. By the end of 2023, the number of new energy vehicles in mainland China will be 20.41 million, with a vehicle-to-pile ratio of 2.4:1, which is a big gap compared with the vehicle-to-pile ratio of 1:1 planned in the "Development Guide". It can be seen that in order to achieve the national new energy vehicle planning goals, the construction of charging infrastructure will become the focus of development in recent years, and the future growth space of the electric vehicle charging industry is huge.
Beijing, Guangdong and Shanghai are the most active investment and financing markets
From the perspective of corporate financing areas in the electric vehicle charging pile industry, Beijing is currently the region with the largest number of financing enterprises. Between 2015 and August 2022, there were 51 financing events in Beijing, including 10 in 2017. It is worth noting that in 2017, the total number of financing events in the electric vehicle charging pile industry nationwide was only 25, which shows that Beijing is active in the investment and financing of electric vehicle charging piles. In addition, the investment and financing market for electric vehicle charging piles in Guangdong, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and other places is also quite active.
Comparison of the development of electric vehicle charging pile industry in China and the United States
Overall, China has a stronger development strength in the electric vehicle charging pile industry. From a supply point of view, the scale of charging pile construction in China far exceeds that of the United States and occupies a dominant position in the world. From the perspective of demand, the consumption of electric vehicles in China is growing rapidly, so the downstream of the charging pile market has formed a considerable demand scale. On the other hand, China's vehicle-to-pile ratio is relatively reasonable, and the construction of charging piles can basically meet the growing demand for electric vehicles. With the continuous improvement of China's electric vehicle sales, the scale of charging pile construction is also expanding, the market competition is becoming more and more sufficient, and the requirements for charging speed and charging safety are also increasing. However, compared with the international leading technology, there is still a gap between technology and performance in some areas of China's electric vehicle charging pile products, and the phenomenon of being large but not strong still exists.
Ma Liang, a researcher at the National Institute of Development and Strategy at Renmin University of Chinese and a professor at the School of Public Administration, suggested that the pricing of charging services for public charging piles should be included in the government's price supervision mechanism to promote the determination and adjustment of public charging prices with reference to the implementation of pricing policies and procedures for relevant public utility services.
According to the forecast of the open source securities research report, the power monitoring market is expected to reach 30.438 billion yuan, and the compound growth rate from 2024 to 2025 is expected to reach 15.69%. Among them, the vigorous development of the new energy vehicle and charging pile industry will promote the rapid growth of the market scale. It is estimated that from 2024 to 2030, the power monitoring market size of China's charging pile sector will reach 34.002 billion yuan, with an average annual market size of 4.857 billion yuan.
Prospective Economist APP Information Group
For more research and analysis of this industry, please refer to the "Market Prospect and Investment Strategic Planning Analysis Report of China's Electric Vehicle Charging Pile Industry" by Qianzhan Industry Research Institute
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