Elon Musk beats Tesla’s charging team after winning over major automakers

Despite recently winning over major automakers like Ford and General Motors and making its connector the de facto standard in North America, Tesla has decimated its charging team in a new round of layoffs.

CEO Elon Musk announced the new layoffs in an overnight email to executives, first reported by The Information, in which he said he wanted leaders to be “comprehensive about reducing headcount and costs.” Kind of tough,” as he ordered them to cut more staff. “Clearly do not pass the excellent, necessary and reliable test” or resign. According to the information, Rebecca Tinucci, senior director of EV charging, and Daniel Ho, head of new vehicles, are out.

Tesla’s Supercharger network has long been seen as one of its biggest competitive advantages. It’s widely available, has far better uptime than other charging networks, and the connector technology – known as the North American Charging Standard, or NACS – is now mandated by every major automaker with a presence in North America. Is being adopted from.

Will Jameson, one of the charging team leaders who made the cut, said in a Post On Musk’s social media platform X that he had “quitted our entire charging organization.”

“What this means for charging networks, NACS and all the exciting work we’re doing across the industry, I don’t know yet. What a wild ride it’s been,” he wrote.

The cutbacks are so complete that Musk even suggested in the email that the company would slow its expansion of the Supercharger network, writing that Tesla “will continue to build some new Supercharger locations, where critical, and complete the locations currently under construction.” Will do.”

According to reports, Musk is also disbanding Tesla’s public policy team. That team’s former VP Rohan Patel left the company two weeks ago at the same time the layoffs were announced. Patel called it “the best policy/bizdev team in the business” at the time, in a message to TechCrunch. “I know I’m extremely biased, but honestly, the people who were on my team are amazing,” he wrote.

Tesla’s policy team is largely responsible for the company winning about 13% of the available funding from bipartisan infrastructure legislation, and until recently another federal grant of about $100 million to build charging corridors for the company still in development. Was trying to get a grant. Electric big rig.

These cuts come just two weeks after Musk announced that Tesla was laying off more than 10% of its workforce as part of a company-wide restructuring in service of “working harder for autonomy.” The company is having a bad first quarter, where its profit fell 55% due to weak EV sales. At the same time, the company’s board is trying to restore Musk’s $56 billion pay package, which was thrown out by a judge, and the CEO has publicly threatened to develop AI technology at his startup xAI, Unless they are given even more control over Tesla.