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Tesla has always been at the forefront of the competitive landscape in the global electric vehicle industry, but Tesla's founder, Elon Musk, made the decision to lay off employees, which has drawn attention to the company.
In mid-April, Musk sent an internal email to employees saying that after a comprehensive review of the company's operations, Tesla had made the difficult decision to reduce the number of employees worldwide by more than 10%.
However, the storm of layoffs did not subside. On April 29, local time, after Musk returned to the United States from his visit to China, he quickly took action and laid off Tesla's entire supercharging (supercharging) team, shocking the industry. Because the Supercharging team is an important department of Tesla, responsible for developing and maintaining Tesla's network of Superchargers, which is critical to the promotion and user experience of Tesla's electric vehicles.
It is understood that the number of employees involved in the layoffs is as high as about 500, including Rebecca Tinucci, senior director of global supercharging at Tesla, who has worked for six years.
Recently, Musk fired the entire supercharging team, and the inside story was exposed.
Employees revealed that Musk was not satisfied with Tinucci's work report and wanted more layoffs. However, Tinucci disagrees with this decision, arguing that further layoffs would undermine the fundamentals of the charging business. Eventually, Musk made the decision to fire Tinucci and his entire team.
However, just when the outside world thought that Tesla would completely abandon the supercharging business, the plot took a dramatic turn. Tesla Inc. has begun to rehire some of its Supercharger team. Among them, the highest-ranking rehire is Max de Zegher, Director of North American Charging Business. After Musk's layoffs, he immediately rehired and "repeated operations" shocked netizens.
In fact, Tesla's emphasis on the supercharging business has never diminished. At the end of November last year, Musk praised Tesla's supercharging business in a live interview on the DealBook forum of the New York Times, calling it a highlight of Tesla. He also said, "If Tesla's Supercharge Network were an independent company, it would be among the Fortune 500 in its own right, relying solely on the supercharge system." On May 10 this year, Musk revealed that Tesla will spend more than $500 million to expand the Supercharger network and create thousands of new charging stations.
At present, the charging pile industry is in a golden period of vigorous development, with the rapid expansion of the new energy vehicle market, charging piles as the "gas station" of electric vehicles, its demand continues to grow. The scale of the industry continues to grow, major enterprises have entered the field of charging piles, and the market competition is becoming increasingly fierce. At the same time, the trend of intelligent and networked charging piles is obvious, which improves the convenience and user experience of charging. The development of the charging pile industry has not only promoted the popularization of new energy vehicles, but also made positive contributions to energy transformation and environmental protection.
China's public fast charging piles for electric vehicles account for more than eighty percent of the world
The increased deployment of public fast charging stations enables EVs to achieve longer journeys, encourages consumers who do not have access to private charging conditions to purchase EVs, and addresses range anxiety among EV users. According to 2021 data, the number of public fast charging piles worldwide reached 569,000, a year-on-year increase of 48%, exceeding the growth rate of 43% in the previous year. The number of public fast charging stations in China increased by more than 50% to about 470,000, down from 93% in 2019 but surpassing the 44% increase in 2020.
Note: The charging power of the IEA defined fast charging pile is more than 22kW, and the charging power of the slow charging pile is less than 22kW.
In the field of public fast charging piles, the cumulative number of public fast charging piles built in China accounted for 82.60% of the global total in 2021, while the United States accounted for only 3.87%.
Shanghai leads the country in the number of charging piles
As part of the rapid development of the current automobile industry, the layout and use of new energy vehicles and their related supporting facilities have received extensive attention from the society. According to the information disclosed by the Shanghai Municipal Transportation Commission, as of 2022, Shanghai has built a total of 697,000 charging piles of various types, of which about 552,000 are self-built in residential areas.
Trend analysis of electric vehicle charging pile industry
In recent years, with the explosive growth of new energy vehicle production and sales in mainland China, the electric vehicle charging pile industry has developed rapidly. However, there are still problems in the mainland electric vehicle charging pile industry, such as low overall utilization rate, long cost recovery cycle, and single financing channel. Under the guidance of the strong support of the state and policy planning, there are the following trends in the development of the electric vehicle charging pile industry in mainland China in the future:
Cui Dongshu, Secretary-General of the Passenger Association, pointed out that in recent years, China's charging infrastructure has developed rapidly, and the world's largest number, the widest range of services, and the most complete type of charging infrastructure system have been built. According to the calculation that 1 public charging pile is equivalent to 3 private charging piles, the proportion of charging piles for pure electric vehicles in China's incremental market in 2023 has reached 1:1, far ahead of the rest of the world several times.
CITIC Securities believes that the charging pile industry is experiencing positive changes. On the one hand, the investment and construction of charging piles are gradually diversified, in addition to traditional charging operators, local government platforms, traditional energy companies and new energy vehicle companies are accelerating into this field, they have formulated clear planning and construction goals, which is expected to inject new impetus into the construction of charging piles. On the other hand, with a large number of 800V high-voltage fast charging models on the market, charging piles need to be upgraded from three aspects: power, heat dissipation and safety, so as to promote the update demand and value enhancement of related supporting parts, and create opportunities for future growth space.
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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