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In the latest move by Elon Musk to ensure the world would look his way and exclaim, “Seriously dude, what the fuck? Get help!” the mercurial billionaire yesterday threw Tesla, his car company into chaos with mass layoffs — that is, if Tesla even is a car company anymore. According to Ars Technica’s summary of a paywalled story at The Information, the heads that rolled (metaphorically, but Elon’s future plans may be more sanguinary) included those of three entire groups that seem fairly important for running an electric car company:
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Senior director of EV charging Rebecca Tinucci, as well as the entire team — more than 500 people — working on Tesla’s widely respected Supercharger fast-charging network;
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Daniel Ho, head of new vehicle development and his entire team, too;
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And hey, why not, the company’s entire public policy team got the axe as well.
The shitcanning of the Supercharger team is only the latest in a long series of setbacks, fuckups, and baffling choices that we can no longer summarize here because that would be half of every article.
That said, this one is especially worrying for EV nerds, because Tesla’s fast-charging stations are widely considered the best in the business, with wide geographic coverage, better reliability than other networks, and in-car software that made planning cross-country trips super easy for Tesla owners. As Heatmap News says, the layoffs were “shocking” for “just about everyone who follows the company,” including people who aren’t all that crazy about Musk or in the market for his cars.
Tesla’s Supercharging network isn’t just a competitive advantage, it’s the de facto national standard for EVs in the United States. Major automakers — Ford, Toyota, General Motors — and EV startups like Rivian have signed deals with Tesla to use its charger design, known as the North American Charging Standard [NACS] and designed their new vehicles (or sent adapters) so their drivers can access the network.
True fact: I’ve been considering leasing an EV sometime this year, but had decided to wait until fall, when models begin rolling out with the NACS charging ports installed standard.
As EV and clean energy blog Electrek reports, the effects of the layoffs are already having an impact. Musk sent an email announcing that Tesla would complete Supercharger stations already being built, but gave no clues as to whether the network will continue to expand. But according to anonymous sources who know what’s going on, Tesla isn’t even going to build some planned stations that haven’t yet broken ground. Tesla has already “backed out of four leases for upcoming Supercharger locations” in New York City, which were on the drawing board following complaints of long wait times at existing Supercharger stations in the city.
The problem was partly due to a surge in Tesla vehicles used by Uber drivers due to a new incentive for the city to electrify its ride-sharing fleet.
In order to address the situation, Tesla promised to deploy 100 additional chargers around New York City by the end of the year and even worked directly with Uber to gather data to locate the new stations at optimal locations. […]
Three of the four sites were “power-ready” – as some work was already being done to prepare them to become charging stations for Tesla.
Elektrek points out that EV taxi company Revel, which operates its own fleet of cabs and public charging stations around NYC, may be interested in developing the stations itself, so that would help EV owners in New York, at least.
Musk himself got on the Twitters yesterday afternoon to try to reassure everyone thinking about dumping their Tesla stock, with a very nonspecific statement that
Tesla still plans to grow the Supercharger network, just at a slower pace for new locations and more focus on 100% uptime and expansion of existing locations
The tweet was only little more specific than Musk’s claim in April that reports he had killed off development of the Model 2 — a smaller, affordable EV aimed at competing with Chinese EVs — were “lying (again).” He twote nothing about the fate of the Model 2 yesterday, although the firing of the development team would seem to speak for itself. He’s a busy man, though, so maybe he’ll think about running a car company between tweets about scary immigrants and transgender people.
Or maybe, as Heatmap News suggests, the sudden layoffs are Musk’s way of underlining that he is no longer interested in electric vehicles at all. Sure, the licensing agreements that opened the Supercharger network to other EV manufacturers was estimated by Bloomberg’s energy research group to be worth a potential “three-quarters of a billion dollars of profits by 2030,” but Elon might be done with cars. He told investors on an earnings call last week that investors shouldn’t be too worry about Tesla cars, because now he wants Tesla to be “thought of as an AI or robotics company” that will build self-driving robotaxis and stupid humanoid robots that may or may not dance (once they’re actually developed and aren’t just a guy in a suit), and maybe also energy storage batteries.
Heatmap adds that Tesla appears to still be all in on AI autonomous driving software and developing its own robotaxis, and notes that “Tesla-watchers have speculated that the future of Tesla’s charging infrastructure will change” as it goes full robotaxi, which Musk says will be rolled out by August 8.
We will put it on our calendar.
Tesla’s stock has been all over the place; up in after-market trading on news that its “Full Self-Driving” software (which requires constant attention from the driver despite the name) is close to rollout in China, then down again yesterday after the layoffs and uncertainty about what kind of company Tesla is, or will be. Musk himself seems to be enjoying the chaos, which he insists will be wonderful.
“Hopefully these actions are making it clear that we need to be absolutely hard core about headcount and cost reduction,” Musk wrote in an email to staff about the Supercharging layoffs, according to The Information. “While some on exec staff are taking this seriously, most are not yet doing so.”
So what comes next? Nobody knows, and the billionaire fuckhead thinks that’s wonderful. He insisted on the sales call that Tesla “constitutes a majority of my work time,” and that “I’m going to make sure Tesla is quite prosperous.”
See? Nothing to worry about. Let’s look at the “robot” introduction from 2021 again, shall we?
PREVIOUSLY!
[Ars Technica / Heatmap / Canary Media / Electrek / E&E News / Musk image adapted from photo by Steve Jurvetson, Creative Commons License 2.0]
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