Tesla's super charging network has always been a source of pride for Musk. Tesla has the world's largest electric vehicle charging infrastructure network, which is also one of the reasons why the company has long been ahead of its competitors.
However, as Tesla restructured and laid off employees, Musk targeted the entire supercharging business unit. On April 29th local time, Musk sent a memo within the company announcing that Rebecca Tinucci, the head of Tesla's supercharging team, and Daniel Ho, the new product manager, will resign with the entire team, which has approximately 500 employees.
At the close of April 30th, Tesla's stock price plummeted by nearly 6%.
Previously, Drew Baglino, Senior Vice President in charge of engineering and technology development for Tesla's batteries, motors, and energy products, also resigned in April.
This move marks Musk accelerating the streamlining of Tesla employees to achieve cost reduction goals. Last month, Musk announced that Tesla will lay off more than 10% of its workforce.
Musk was also shocked that Tesla's management did not follow his instructions to streamline employees more quickly. He said, "Any department manager who retains three or more employees who have not clearly passed the excellent, necessary, and trustworthy employee evaluation test should resign."
The employees of the department that was laid off were also surprised by this. Will Jameson, a former employee of Tesla's supercharging team, wrote on social media platform X: "Musk made our entire charging team leave!" Other employees in the department also posted on LinkedIn confirming that they had been fired.
According to a reporter from First Financial News, Tesla has been feeling anxious internally recently, and some colleagues who believe their positions are "very safe" have also received notice of being hired recently. Some employees who have not been laid off have "significantly increased their workload".
The latest layoff measures have also raised doubts about the future of Tesla's charging business from the outside world. Tesla did not issue a warning to investors in advance regarding the withdrawal of its charging infrastructure construction plan, which shocked Tesla's charging station partners, including small and medium-sized enterprises that install and maintain electric vehicle charging equipment for Tesla in key locations across the United States.
A Tesla supercharging network contractor stated that emails sent to approximately twenty different Tesla related business contacts on the same day were all returned.
But this does not mean that Tesla will completely stop expanding its supercharging network, but rather slow down the layout process, especially the expansion of the US supercharging station network.
Musk posted on the X platform stating that he will "slow down" the construction of some new sites and focus more on fully utilizing the utilization of existing charging facilities. In addition, the super charging stations under construction will be gradually completed.
It is currently unclear whether the layoffs in the charging department will affect Tesla's China charging business and related employees. Due to the May Day holiday, as of press release, Tesla China has not yet responded to inquiries from First Financial reporters.
According to Tesla's official website, the company has a massive fast charging network and has built over 50000 super charging stations worldwide. The super charging network layout in Chinese Mainland adopts the principle of simultaneous layout of city stations and long-distance stations.
Data shows that as of November 2023, Tesla has nearly 2000 super charging stations and more than 10000 super charging piles in Chinese Mainland.