Shortly after news broke that Tesla would be laying off another round of employees, including the team behind the company's Supercharger charging-station network, CEO Elon Musk took to social media to reassure owners and investors that the stations aren't going anywhere.
"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," Musk wrote in a post on X.
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
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 30, 2024
Despite Musk's assurances, Tesla has already begun pulling out of leases for upcoming stations in New York, the EV news site Electrek reported.
The company currently operates 57,579 Superchargers at 6,249 locations globally, the outlet said.
Even the most die-hard Tesla fans were disheartened by the news. Commenters on Musk's post called his announcement "kinda lame" and urged him to reconsider, saying that a large charging network is key to promoting widespread adoption of electric vehicles nationwide.
"This is a goddamn disaster. Superchargers need to be Tesla's second top growing sector outside of FSD," Troy Meekhof, whose site, The Cybertruck Guy, covers Teslas and other EVs, wrote in response to Musk's post. "You're opening up the network to practically every EV driver on the continent without building with urgency? I'm honestly floored at this decision."
Meekhof told Business Insider that, as an owner of two Tesla vehicles, he's very familiar with Superchargers and called them "damn near magical," saying they've worked for him every time and the stations he visits are rarely full. However, entire sections of the country and his home state of Michigan are mostly off-limits to him and his vehicles, he said, "simply because of the lack of charging options."
"I'm generally apt to trust Musk's maniacal whims because they're indicative of a more complex longer-term plan, but destroying the division responsible for what I believe is their single greatest achievement in North America is simultaneously shocking and bewildering," Meekhof told BI. He's "certainly looking forward to seeing what this broader plan is, but at face value, I'm alarmed," he added.
The latest round of Tesla layoffs, which were announced by Musk via email late Monday, included Rebecca Tinucci, a senior director of the company's Supercharger group, and Daniel Ho, the head of new products. Though some employees on the Supercharger team may be reassigned, the team, which had about 500 employees, was dissolved.
The cuts come after Tesla's lukewarm earnings report last week, which included an 8.7% year-over-year first-quarter revenue drop, its earnings per share missing consensus forecasts, and the company's free cash flow dropping 674% year-over-year to negative $2.5 billion.
Representatives for Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Correction: May 1, 2024 — An earlier version of this story misstated the name of Tesla's charging stations. They are Supercharger stations, not Supercharging stations.
