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Elon Musk has fired Tesla's entire 500-person Supercharging team. Yes, you read that right. The group of people responsible for Tesla's most significant competitive advantage are now canned.
This is their reward for helping turn the Supercharger Network into the de facto nationwide standard. Last year, all EV makers signed a deal with Tesla to give non-Teslas access to Supercharger stations in exchange for adopting the proprietary North American Charging Standard (NACS) charge port needed to use them. Ford and Rivian drivers got access earlier this year, with the rest of the brands to follow throughout 2024. At least that's the plan.
It's an abrupt end for the Supercharging team, though not out of character for Musk, who took a similar slash-and-burn approach when he took over Twitter (now X) in late 2022.
How Do You Expand With No Team?
For now, the shift from the Combined Charging System (CCS) to NACS is still a go.
"Ford's plans for our customers do not change," a Ford spokesperson tells me.
"Rivian owners continue to have access to the Tesla Supercharger Network," says a Rivian spokesperson. "Rivian plans to continue with its future implementation of the NACS/SAE J3400 port in its vehicles."
But emails to the Tesla Supercharging team now go unanswered, an industry insider who asked to remain anonymous tells me. There's no one left. All we know is what Musk tweeted yesterday: "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."
With no staff, who will help the rest of the EV brands connect to the network? Volvo, Polestar, and GM are scheduled to gain access this spring (i.e. now). They all responded "no comment" to my inquiries about what Tesla has told them about upcoming rollouts. It's done via an over-the-air update, so perhaps Tesla will pull an engineer from another department to push the code.
Desperate Times
We can only speculate what Musk is thinking, but Tesla's lackluster financial results likely played a role. Deliveries dropped 8.5% in Q1 year-over-year, its first year-over-year decline in quarterly deliveries since 2020. Ironically, the increase in Superchargers was a bright spot in Tesla's Q1 shareholder deck as the network continued its expansion. By mid-April, however, Tesla announced plans to cut 10% of its staff, or 14,000 jobs.
Musk did not discuss the NACS expansion on an April 23 earnings call, and instead doubled down on a favorite topic: autonomous driving, which he previously called "one of the hardest technical problems that ever existed."
"If somebody doesn't believe Tesla's going to solve autonomy, I think they should not be an investor in the company," according to Musk, who plans to debut a prototype robotaxi on Aug. 8. This "Cybercab" is reportedly now a higher priority than making a $25,000 entry-level Tesla, though Musk has pushed back on those reports. Is it also stealing focus from Supercharging?
Whatever is going on behind the scenes or inside Musk's head, the Supercharging news sends a clear message to the rest of the auto industry: We are not in this together.
Last summer Musk tweeted that "we built the Supercharger network out of desperation, since no one else was doing it." What act of desperation is next?