Elon Musk fires Tesla's entire supercharger team

[gnabgib]

Ongoing discussion [0] (71 points, 8 hours ago, 91 comments)

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40209382

[yifanl]

Curiously, linked discussion has been downranked to Page 19 at time of posting.

[grakker]

The article starts with "Elon Musk has shut down the division that runs Tesla’s Supercharger business, dismissed two senior executives and fired hundreds more staff as the electric-car maker continues its restructuring amid a sharp downturn in the EV market."

I was thinking, "sharp downturn in the EV market?" So I looked up some stats and found "US EV sales reached 1,119,251 in 2023, up from 760,329 in 2022, 462,247 in 2021, 245,586 in 2020, and 230,761 in 2019."

There's no "sharp downturn". It's just people getting fed up with a fascist spokesperson, a product that has looked dated for years now, and better options available. I wish we still had decent journalists.

[kybernetikos]

I think maybe it's more an overcapacity with more manufacturers getting models out there plus the early adopter market getting near saturated and the rate of growth dropping a lot and that its not fully crossed the chasm to mainstream yet.

So it's not that adoption as a whole is in trouble but more that any one ev maker is going to find it harder to make a lot of sales at the moment.

And it's definitely the case that a big chunk of tesla stock value was tied up with elons brand which is looking more like a problem than a benefit these days.

[mikrotikker]

Got a source for him being a Fascist?

[bfrog]

Perhaps Elon should step down? It seems his golden boy image is more than a little tarnished and he’s leaving bodies in his wake in sizable proportions.

[smoovb]

Thankfully great entrepreneurs are only emboldened by sentiment like this.

[weekay]

“Any manager “who retains more than three people who don’t obviously pass the excellent, necessary and trustworthy test” should resign, he added.”

This is interesting. Get the assessment for being excellent and necessary is linked to strategy and business plans . How does one assess trustworthiness ? Interesting to understand what a trustworthy test would look like !

[blackeyeblitzar]

I wonder if this has something to do with his China visit. Like is he outsourcing this to someone else like BYD?

[tayo42]

Wasn't this one of the things going well for tesla and positioning to actually not just be a car company?

When does SpaceX go to shit now and all that tax money subsidizing it go to waste?

[oniony]

A few years ago I fully expected Tesla to pull out of the vehicle game and focus on drivetrains, self-driving software, charging network and home/commercial battery banks.

[tahoeskibum]

Is this really true or just clickbait being bandied about?

[Tiktaalik]

folks on twitter seem to be reporting that they've been laid off. Seems legit.

https://x.com/willjameson/status/1785304036545315065?s=46&t=...

[bboygravity]

Very legit question that everybody should ask themselves when reading anything Musk related in 2024.

In this case it seems true.

[LeoPanthera]

Many of the recently-fired team has been posting on Reddit about it.

[qarl]

HEH. Never heard of "The Financial Times", eh?

It's not clickbait.

[Reubend]

It's true.

[pedalpete]

https://archive.is/h5WgR

[ChrisArchitect]

[dupe]

[nightshadetrie]

I wonder if someone on their team angered Elon, or if it’s just related to a new strategy.

Elon will properly rehire those he needs from the team via extra compensation as needed.

[vishalontheline]

Tesla's charging standard is now the standard that everyone's going to use. There are other companies building out chargers. Demand for EV's in general seems to be dropping, so Tesla's EV's will be the biggest beneficiaries of new EV chargers built by everyone else.

Given all of that, Tesla no longer needs to be in the supercharger game.

[archagon]

This would be foolish to rely on. If you throw an entire division in the trash, some of your critical employees won’t return at (almost) any price.

[pie420]

Yep, maybe 10-15 will need to be rehired at double salary. It should be an incredibly formalized process in terms of building new superchargers. Maintaining old superchargers likely requires only 4-5 managers and 40-50 technicians globally, although they might be contractors. Building out a new supercharger is likely incredibly formalized, with permiting, design, architecture, and electrical work all done via thrid parties. No need to have 500 people around.

[browningstreet]

“New strategy” ..how long ago was this strategy hatched?

[Tiktaalik]

Remarkable thing here is that other vendors such as Rivian and Ford just joined up to the supercharging network, and now we have to wonder: if the majority (entirety?) of the supercharging team has been laid off, is this infrastructure that Rivian and Ford presumably paid to access going to start failing and (figuratively) rusting away?

[xhkkffbf]

It could be the opposite. Ford, Rivian and other third parties will be building to this standard. Tesla no longer needs to jump start the marketplace, so to speak.