Elon Musk gutted the part of Tesla responsible for building electric vehicle charging stations, sowing uncertainty about the future of America’s largest and most reliable charging network.
The layoffs of around 500 Tesla employees, many of them speaking out on social media on Tuesday, have raised questions about offers that Mr. Musk, the Tesla chief executive, last year hit out at executives at General Motors, Ford Motor and other automakers for allowing cars made by other companies to use Tesla Supercharger stations.
Tesla’s agreements with other electric car makers have assured buyers that they will be able to find fast chargers while traveling by car, addressing one of the main reasons many people are hesitant to buy such cars. It was also seen as a coup by Mr. Musk, validating Tesla’s technology and giving the company outsized influence over the auto industry.
Almost all major manufacturers have announced plans to modify the hardware and software of their cars to make them compatible with Tesla chargers. Ford has been sending adapters to owners of its older electric vehicles so they can connect to Tesla’s chargers.
Mr. Musk said on X, the social media site he owns, that Tesla would slow down building new charging stations and focus more on 100% availability and expanding existing locations.
In an email to employees on Monday reviewed by The New York Times, Mr. Musk said he would disband “the entire group of about 500 people” who had worked to build new Supercharger stations. In that message, he said the company would complete stations under construction and build new ones “where critical.”
The sudden dismissal of the Supercharger team caught many people off guard.
Andrés Pinter, whose company installs chargers for Tesla, said he was stunned Tuesday morning to learn of the layoffs, which affected around 20 people he had been in contact with on construction projects. He said emails to those Tesla employees returned an automated message saying those addresses were no longer valid.
“I view this as a shocking reversal from the Supercharger network,” said Mr. Pinter, co-chief executive of Bullet EV Charging Solutions, based in Austin, Texas, where Tesla is also based. Until Tuesday, Mr. Pinter said, Tesla had been pushing Bullet to expand into other states and move as quickly as possible.
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment. News of the layoffs was reported earlier by Information.
A Ford spokesman, Martin Günsberg, said the company’s plans had not changed.
Many of Tesla’s laid-off employees have publicly discussed job cuts. Mr. Musk “abandoned our entire charging organization,” said William Navarro Jameson, a senior executive for Tesla’s charging operations. said the. “I don’t know yet what this means for the charging network, NACS and all the exciting work we were doing in the industry.”
NACS, or North American Charging Standard, was developed by Tesla and has a reputation for being a reliable and easy-to-use charging technology.
The latest layoffs, two weeks after Tesla announced it was the case lay off 14,000 people around the world, unstable investors who had regained confidence in the company after last week’s announcement of a First-quarter profit down 55 percent.
Tesla shares closed down about 5% Tuesday afternoon, although they are still up about 13% since Thursday. Mr. Musk has said in recent weeks that despite a decline in car sales, Tesla still has enormous growth potential through products based on artificial intelligence and self-driving technology.
The charging network is seen as a key part of Tesla’s dominance in the electric vehicle market. There were virtually no fast charging stations when the company began selling the Model S, its first sedan, in 2012. Tesla has built its own network of more than 2,600 fast charging stations in the United States . These are often the only chargers in many areas.
“You made the adoption of electric vehicles possible,” said George Bahadue, another senior manager at the charging unit. LinkedIn in a message to other team members who had also lost their jobs.
By allowing other manufacturers to use the network, Tesla has opened up a potentially lucrative source of recurring revenue. But Mr. Musk also removed exclusive network access, which was one of the benefits of owning Tesla cars.
The automaker has been a major recipient of federal funds to build charging networks. As other automakers like Hyundai and Ford have eaten away at Tesla’s market share, Mr. Musk may have concluded that it is not in Tesla’s best interest to build many more charging stations, which would help its rivals sell cars.
Some employees expressed bitterness after the layoffs, raising the risk that the abrupt layoffs could undermine the morale of those still with the company.
“If you had told me a month ago that Tesla was a company that would educate the people, some with over 10 years of experience, who helped make the company what it is today, with nothing more than a “Dear Employee” email in the middle of the night,” wrote Lane Chaplin, a former employee of the charging unit, on LinkedIn“I would have said you were crazy.”
Ryan Mac reports contributed.
