QOTD: What Impact Will The Tesla Layoffs Have on EV Charging?
Yesterday, Tesla laid off the entire team responsible for working on its Supercharger stations. Considering that so many other automakers are in the process of switching to the Tesla charging standard, how is this going to affect the EV charging landscape?
We might already be seeing an answer, at least if this story is indicative of what's to come.
Or maybe not. It's a bit early to tell, since the layoffs happened just yesterday.
Still, I am curious what's going to happen here. With the growth of Supercharger stations slowing but the EV market growing, how will this impact charging in general?
At least the existing Superchargers aren't going anywhere -- Tesla said that the move is being made in part to focus on maintaining the stations already in use.
What say you?
Sound off below.
[Image: Tesla]
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Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.
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If Tesla stops maintaining and expanding the Superchargers at current levels, imagine the chaos as more EV owners with high expectations visit crowded and no longer reliable Superchargers.
It feels like at this point, Musk is nearly bored enough with Tesla and EVs in general to literally take his ball and going home.
It probably won't make a bit of difference. Tesla has a working design for a charging station and probably a comprehensive manual for construction and installation. Nothing that a competent general contractor couldn't handle. Why keep people on the payroll when there are plenty of takers that will be happy for the work? The task of locating and acquiring real estate was probably dumped on some of the corporate survivors.
For the medium to long term, not much as other automakers are building out their own charging network whether via the consortium or on their own (some, like Mercedes are doing both).
If you believe what Elon says, he said on X that the plan is expand at current locations and make sure that the current chargers are being maintained. Like I said on the previous thread on this, they probably looked at the numbers and realized that new chargers in new places aren't cost effective.