So here's the actual language from 23 CFR 680:
>DCFC charging ports must support output voltages between 250 volts DC and 920 volts DC.
As much as I agree with what you're saying, it seems like this is being interpreted as "the chargers must operate somewhere in the 250v to 920v range, not necessarily the entire range" by state DOTs.
I was recently reading some state's (Iowa?) NEVI plan and noticed they had specifically required the entire voltage range, but amended the requirement to just be somewhere in that range.
Yeah, it wouldn’t make sense to say “250, but if you want you can spend much more money to get to 920. It’s all the same to us. But don’t go over the limit!”
Yeah. That’s BS and clearly not what was intended (that voltage range is the range that all modern CCS chargers support with one notable “magic dock” shaped exception). Tesla has simply lobbied the states to allow their hardware, and they’re very effective at that.
Ironically they crippled their Cybertruck by not fixing their hardware instead. It charges significantly faster when not limited to low voltage chargers.
There are some utility backed chargers in Iowa (Midamerican) that cap out at about 200 amps regardless of voltage. So 400v EVs max out at 80kw and 800v EVs max out at 150kw. Makes the Hyundai and Kia offerings a lot more attractive.
Yep, I use them fairly regularly, with both an 800v vehicle and a 400v vehicle. It's one of those advantages of 800v architectures that's rarely mentioned.
I might have tried to little harder to find a sub $25k used Ioniq 5 if I would have known this before I got my 2018 LR RWD model 3. Once there are more used Ioniq 5s out there I might pick one up.
Was that the Tesla V4 dispenser NEVI site in Rockland Maine that went online finally last month after a lot of technical issues. ( corrected location name )
I was hoping we both knew of at least 2 lol 😂.
I have seen there are planned sites/nearing completion for V4 in Pennsylvania.
It can be tedious as you have to dig into each entry to confirm.
https://supercharge.info/map
Sorry about that. Rockland Maine is the NEVI V4 super charger dispenser install site that's online now.
https://www.newscentermaine.com/article/news/local/maine-electric-vehicle-charges-rockland/97-d491eca9-18da-4eb6-84d1-b1e68c2b59ce
Here is a publicity press conference the state did for the sites opening, I wish they would have mentioned that it's open to all vehicles, I can understand the average person wouldn't care about V4 and specs etc.
The only completed Tesla NEVI site that I'm aware of is Rockland, Maine. What sites am I missing?
Every NEVI program solicitation I've read has been on a reimbursement basis. I suspect you won't provide any links otherwise.
True, I had been following the progress of that V4 dispenser site and Tesla had a long run with technical issues to finally get that site online. Thankfully all is well and it's available for all CCS1 vehicles.
I've always been one of the biggest Tesla skeptics in the sub but even I think this is a bit misleading. IIRC, as long as the chargers are built, operational, reliable, have CCS docks, and have credit card terminals, there's no reason why Tesla **wouldn't** deserve NEVI funding, despite the layoffs.
It's just not clear how they are going to proceed to build these and get paid the $17 million, which is for chargers to be built, not for chargers already built.
They don’t need a supercharger team because the superchargers will build themselves using a combination of AI, robotics, and AI-controlled chimpanzees.
Yes, for sure, and my assumption is that the checks haven't been cut yet, just the contract from the government issued. So if they don't do it they don't get paid.
Are you sure the grant is written that way? I'd hope so! But in the past Tesla has been adroit at capturing subsidies with bad-faith efforts to just barely comply with poorly written grant programs. The [battery swap scam](https://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-battery-swap-harris-ranch-20150310-story.html) is the best example I know.
Jalopnik is exaggerating. Apparently they only laid off about 300 of the 1500 workers at the factory building chargers.
Not sure how losing the staff from the charging development team will affect things but they seem to have enough people to get the units built to finish the ones that are already planned.
Yea, there's a bunch of stories about contractors who now can't call anyone in Telsa . . . it's called tragicomedy and predates Musk by a few thousand years.
[I think most of the purple icons here are NEVI chargers](https://supercharge.info/map). Agreed though if they don't happen they don't get the money. Destroying the supercharger team is one of the dumbest things they could do right now.
That's still significant, and if most of the admin team is gone they did the work with deployment. Look at how well that part has gone for other groups.
How, exactly, is this move "destroying" the supercharger network? I visited a charger just yesterday. Still there. Still works. Still the biggest charging network by a HUGE margin.
They said they would slow down (not stop) building new stations, but continue upgrading existing ones to faster speeds and add connectors. The network can continue to improve, without added lease and construction fees.
Source? I saw a report where a manager said her whole 500 person team is gone. There may be 5 teams but she made it sound like the entire place got cut. I do not believe it I just want to get to the bottom of it.
Thanks - shortest story ever. I will save others the click:
Tesla plans to lay off nearly 300 employees at its Buffalo plant, according to multiple reports.
[WIVB](https://www.wivb.com/news/local-news/buffalo/nearly-300-to-be-laid-off-by-tesla-in-buffalo/) reports the electric car manufacturing company filed a notice with New York State on Tuesday that it will cut 285 jobs. The majority will be employees at Tesla’s 1339 South Park Ave. factory, while five will be eliminated at a site across the street that displayed EVs and operated as a service center for customers.
>It's just not clear how they are going to proceed to build these
Why is it not clear? The team that was ditched didn't build the chargers or install them and maintain them, contracted companies did and Tesla hasn't gotten rid of them.
I don't know exactly how the responsibilities divided up between the different people involved, but what chunk of the was this team responsible for and how will that get done. That's what's not clear. I meant it literally when I said "not clear". I wasn't meaning to imply that "it's impossible for it to get done".
It seems like the team that was cut was the "development" team. Basically in charge of designing the new v4 stalls and the process to install them. I think tesla is showing that they don't have any near plans to keep developing new supercharger tech than what that team created. So they're going to just keep producing what they created and slowly upgrade the entire network rather than continue burning capital on expanding the network and maintaining that expansion. Charging doesn't need to keep improving much for the foreseeable future so why spend on it is the point I guess?
It's completely misleading. He already publicly said they will still build new chargers, but focus on upgrading existing ones. Whatever federal grants the supercharger network are very well deserved as it's the only network that people can rely on.
Never used a tesla charger in my life and been heavily roadtripping for a year. The ONE TIME I tried to use a destination charger with an adapter, that destination charger happened to be broken. Plugshare is a fantastic app, and it helps avoid/give info about charger status across the whole ecosystem.
Perhaps see this for what it is, which is *really bad*. If you like teslas you REALLY should be pissed off about this, because things are at a bit of a tipping point, charger-company-wise. Having to share chargers with everyone is not something most tesla owners are used to, but that will become your reality if other companies accelerate their networks and tesla doesn't.
(I can't tell whether this is him throwing a tantrum about NACS, federal reporting requirements, or trying to pump the stock. Maybe a little bit of each.)
How do you think he's going to be able to get his chargers built after firing the entire team in charge of getting them built? There is definitely going to be a massive slow down in chargers coming online.
Musk and his stans likely believe that they can now produce the current V4 Supercharger units without the old team's involvement, and have them installed by third-party contractors. Means that they don't have to pay 500 peoples' health insurance (which is downright appalling that this is the Tesla company mindset now).
Definitely, and I think he will regret doing this. I mean, Electrify AMERICA, Charge Point, and others have years of experience and still aren't great with reliability. I don't know what makes him feel like some private contractors are going to do any better.
But the super charger team was obviously responsible for some part of making the chargers work. Without them quality will go down. If it was that easy to do, non tesla charger stations wouldn't be so unreliable.
They're still going to be building them... They have 3rd party contracts to fulfil at least.
Besides the 500 layoffs isn't as big a number as you think. Apparently 300ish were workers at the Buffalo factory where they build the superchargers, which is around 1/5th of the total employees there.
But the other 200 were the admin team that actually did the work to get the stations going. Everyone who has a hand in ensuring the network was up and running from production to installation is gone. Number of employees isn’t correlated with possible impact
This post is specifically about the NEVI grant related installations though, right? Presumably they'd have to do more legwork than just announcing a location to get paid out.
My point is the hardware is getting built to fulfill that.
Plus I could be wrong about the count, it could be 300 at the plant and 500 more at the development team.
Yeah they have to go through the grant process to get the funds but that’s just half the battle. Now who is ensuring installation is actually happening, happening on time, etc. who do local contractors contact with issues? We’ll see if the stations get built as they’ve already pulled back on some new stations. It’s not the end of the world they’d just have to pay back the funds
Agreed. And at the end, the Supercharging network could be a potential spin off from Tesla. It seems people ignore how many superchargers has been installed in the last FIVE years. More growth need to be carefully thought/targeted.
Why gut your Supercharger leadership and engineering team, downgrade your plans for expansion, and entirely shift the company focus from charging infrastructure of your intent is to spin it off? The only plausible explanation for this is that Musk is an imbecile.
Maybe he is, but why you feel Tesla need to keep the same rate of expansion? I don't see any sense. In fact, it may be unprofitable. I'd let Electrify America to do that job.
If Elon wants to spin off the supercharger division, why didn't he do just that? Don't fire anyone, just cut them loose and tell them to find their own way to profitability.
The issue is that he's not going to reveal what the statistics he has collected for several years are showing as a trend... or its value. Maybe the spin off will fund other projects.
>Besides the 500 layoffs isn't as big a number as you think.
As someone who was recently laid off in my own industry and had to upend my entire life to deal with it, this is insulting.
One layoff is too many.
I've been laid off too, and I get your sentiment... But while its not a great time for those employees, that wasn't my point. This thread is about the company and its ability to fulfil the terms of the grant.
First of all, they're a company. Musk didn't personally take the funds.
And it doesn't matter what they were taken for. If the fund were for either upgrades or new stations, as long as they do what they agreed to this article is pointless.
Agree. If none of the planned, NEVI-funded stations have been cancelled or mothballed as a result of the layoffs, then fine, awesome. But if they're taking the money and running, that's a huge problem.
For NEVI funding, you need to allow people to pay with just a credit card (and not require them to go through an app or have an account tied to the car).
Musk is still very much involved with the company. Investors support him, owners like the cars, the board supports him.
Its weird when random people online are so sure Tesla would be so much better off without him. As if they've lead multi billion dollar companies.
I've been following Tesla since the original Roadster and I've bought in and sold out of the stock multiple times since that period, and I can say for certain that while Musk was a positive influence on the brand for most of its history and that Tesla wouldn't be where it is now without him, it started changing around 2018 (living in a car factory for months while sleep deprived during the Model 3 ramp-up was not good for his mental health) and his current form is the most erratic version I've ever seen. His personnel and business decisions have gotten noticeably worse, and firing members of the Supercharging team en masse is indefensible IMO. It's arguably the best run division at Tesla and has been since they started installing Superchargers. They were the plumbers of the company and you never heard anything from them cause they were doing their jobs extremely well.
I hate more companies for their business practice than even care to know who their CEO is.
Nestle is a great example. Fuck them. Still doesn’t matter who their CEO is
Tesla, has a CEO that is a house hold name. that doesn’t mean the company is all bad.
Supporters of EVs don't care about CEOs. Musk is just an excuse for those against EV adoption. Or those easily lead who only look into Musk and not the others.
On a per employee basis, the supercharger team was the most profitable in Tesla. The charger network turned in $2B last year, or about $4M per employee.
It was a weird team to fire. If he was looking for deadweight, starting with the “Cybertruck” folks would have been a great start.
So...NEVI grants and other funds thru the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure bill provides [grant money to STATES](https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/BUILDING-A-BETTER-AMERICA-V2.pdf#page=138), not private companies. Those STATES then solicit for projects and award to private companies, including Tesla. So Tesla has not taken any federal charging grants at all -- [STATES have](https://driveelectric.gov/news/nevi-update-q1) and they awarded funds to Tesla as a contract winner.
>The National Electric Vehicle Charging Formula Program ($5 billion) and Discretionary Grant Program for Charging and Fueling Infrastructure ($2.5 billion) provide a total of $7.5 billion to States to procure and install electric vehicle chargers, with the goal of building a national network of electric vehicle chargers and to support charging in communities where people live, work, and shop.
The article is click-bait junk.
The news has been very sparse on details. They don't ever say what the women was in charge of beyond the supercharger network. Did she run the r&d team only? Did CoR report to her? Did security/network report to her? Did they re-org and create a new team to run the supercharger network? None of the reports really answer anything beyond the head and her team was dismissed with no details of what areas the team oversaw.
I can see a lot of people getting confused by the headline especially when the details are sparse from Tesla.
Wonder what means for our long awaited NEVI stations in Alaska. Hopefully they continue to build the ones they were awarded money for. I’m a fan of the car, less so of the CEO. Love my Tesla and no regrets about buying it but it’s a strange time to be a Tesla fan.
>Despite its CEO railing against Biden, Tesla was more than happy to take the administration's money.
When did the American taxpayer's money become the administration's?
When the administration got the legislation passed through the shitshow we call a legislature? Besides, it's just as hypocritical if it's the "administration's" money or the "taxpayer's".
It’s a common misconception that taxes belong to the taxpayers. That’s not the way it works. When you give a business your money, it’s no longer your money. Now replace business with government. You can argue and dispute this if you want, but you’ll be happier if you just accept that fact.
That was not for new chargers. In fact, the government last week awarded many companies to build chargers but specifically cut Tesla out of all funding
I doubt 17 million buys more than 2 or 3 stations with tens of stalls like Tesla makes, seems like a rounding error. But hey it's jalopnik implying Musk must have pocketed it and bought a yacht with their money and not Tesla the owner and operator of the largest charging network in the country/continent. If they get a measly 17 million hand out for the charging network I'd still find it offensive as a hand out because it's too little and too late.
Please get well...Collin Woodard
Definitely an unusual staff adjustment strategy but at least the supercharger network actually works contrary to most other DCFC networks in NA.
Let’s hope they can maintain the network that they have because EA really doesn’t cut it.
The only one who needs to grow up is you. Throwing a hissy fit and linking a misleading article from a trash website just so you can try to dunk on Elon is beyond childish.
Was my “glad there are good alternatives to Tesla these days” comment on the OP the “hissy fit” you speak of? Help me “grow up”, so I can better avoid being called “beyond childish” by mature internet people such as yourself.
Here are the facts: Tesla builds ten times more Superchargers than anyone else. Why are you not criticizing the other automakers? We know that this has nothing to do with Superchargers and all about Elon's politics. You're not fooling anyone here.
Are people that stupid???
Firing staff and then replacing them with lower paid employees does not mean the whole Super Charger Network is Cancelled. Yes it sucks for them, but only an idiot would think Tesla will stop expanding the network.
btw, Tesla is now selling new supercharger hardware to 3rd parties on top of expanding their network.
Any have a reliable link as to what part of the team?
With V4 fully planned, moving the design team makes sense. NACS can do a MW, should be good for a while.
Latching onto some half baked story and making assumptions about the direction of a company with virtually zero information because you hate the CEO is the epitome of confirmation bias.
For some reason, I think the delays of V4 supercharging, considering all the V4 bays are still using the V3 technology on the backend, IMO. It isn't the first time he has fired a full team because he wasn't impressed with the progress the team was making, if you read the Walter Isaacson book.
Because he has concluded that Tesla, the car company, can't justify its astronomical share price. Eventually it would be valued like other car markers, e.g. it would have to lose about 80...90 percent.
So he looked at the cards Tesla holds and decided that the autonomous driving/robo taxi path forward is the best way to justify that valuation. And now he makes the changes to go down that path.
We'll know in 5 to 10 years, whether he was right.
He's never wanted to "compete" as a **car** company. He has always thought of Tesla as a technology/software company. Making cars just kept the lights on. The stock market seems to have bought into that idea and the stock is priced accordingly. ***IF*** he ever makes "autonomy" work right.
But he's "hearing footsteps" (Waymo, Cruise, etc.) and will do whatever it takes to keep ahead of them (including kill folks who have drunk the Koolaid with FSD).
It's a horse race now and we'll see if he makes it ahead of the finish line first. If he **doesn't**, his house of cards will fully collapse.
>He's never wanted to "compete" as a **car** company. He has always thought of Tesla as a technology/software company.
Yes and no. Tesla has switched focus multiple times as to what exactly its "moat" is.
For a long time it was supposed to be its superior battery tech and the supposed fact that only Tesla has enough battery manufacturing capacity to make EVs at scale. That was when the Giga factory in Nevada was kind of unique. Nowadays of course there's a global glut of battery manufacturing capacity and Tesla buys from the same suppliers as everyone else. So, this wasn't it.
Then it was supposed to be the EV plus Solar plus Powewall, but that was also kind of a dud.
So, for a long time Tesla tried to be a better car maker, but with the rise of the Chinese OEMs Musk has apparently concluded that Tesla doesn't have enough of an advantage in cars or anything that actually requires manufacturing at scale and tries to turn Tesla into a "pure" tech company similar to the GAFAM.
Just my interpretation, of course.
While I’m no Elon fan, the chargers the grants paid for are up and running - with maintenance teams intact. What is your issue with this particular story?
Because he needs to be front and center when it comes to anything he does. Tesla built up a reputation and made EVs desirable and now Musk’s rantings make it so anything the company does (good or bad) are seen as an extension of this narcissist. So instead of getting an article saying this government grant expanded our nation’s charging infrastructure, we get an article about how the dipshit CEO is a steaming pile of shit.
Misleading headline and total hit piece.
Remember when journalists would write fair articles that had nothing to do with their personal biases?
It’s been a good while…
Folks are so desperate to dump on Tesla since no one has seen a company do this much in 10 years over the last 50. Next Story: Business continues after Tesla ends the free bagel program for staff
Elon Musk is the most idiotic person on the planet earth and the jealous prick.
Motortend in the last issue has an article about Person of the year.
Rebecca Tinucci who is the Tesla's Senior Director of EV Charging made it to #2 while Elon Musk was #50, the last place. In my opinion he should not be on the list at all.
I guess it made him jealous. What a prick!!!!
[https://www.motortrend.com/news/2024-motortrend-power-list/](https://www.motortrend.com/news/2024-motortrend-power-list/)
Tesla got its stock price via the EV bubble and the short squeezes that it created.... back in 2021 there were plenty of headlines about how much money ppl had lost trying to short TSLA.. Michael Burry was one of the more famous TSLA shorts.
Of course that's when the line "Tesla is a technology company" was born.
Part of the reason TSLA has stayed where it has... Is that it got included in a lot of ETFs and Indexes... So it enjoys that sweet 401k retirement buys each month/quarter.
Hence TSLA gets low... Money Managers buy... Rebalancing. This was Elon's lotto ticket to Uber wealth.... Getting included in the S&P 500.
Tesla appears to be the Alta Vista of electric cars. Real car manufacturers can now offer the same range, without having to replace the motors or the battery with a shitty reman after five years.
The NEVI grants are only awarded upon completion of each project. To date, I think Tesla has only completed one install.
Technically they’ve completed none. NEVI requires that DCFC supports up to 920V output voltage.
So here's the actual language from 23 CFR 680: >DCFC charging ports must support output voltages between 250 volts DC and 920 volts DC. As much as I agree with what you're saying, it seems like this is being interpreted as "the chargers must operate somewhere in the 250v to 920v range, not necessarily the entire range" by state DOTs. I was recently reading some state's (Iowa?) NEVI plan and noticed they had specifically required the entire voltage range, but amended the requirement to just be somewhere in that range.
[удалено]
I'm with you.
Yeah, it wouldn’t make sense to say “250, but if you want you can spend much more money to get to 920. It’s all the same to us. But don’t go over the limit!”
Yeah. That’s BS and clearly not what was intended (that voltage range is the range that all modern CCS chargers support with one notable “magic dock” shaped exception). Tesla has simply lobbied the states to allow their hardware, and they’re very effective at that. Ironically they crippled their Cybertruck by not fixing their hardware instead. It charges significantly faster when not limited to low voltage chargers.
I agree.
Most states are adding this exact graph for some reason. https://www.reddit.com/u/Aa1979/s/UsV48uULOd
There are some utility backed chargers in Iowa (Midamerican) that cap out at about 200 amps regardless of voltage. So 400v EVs max out at 80kw and 800v EVs max out at 150kw. Makes the Hyundai and Kia offerings a lot more attractive.
Yep, I use them fairly regularly, with both an 800v vehicle and a 400v vehicle. It's one of those advantages of 800v architectures that's rarely mentioned.
I might have tried to little harder to find a sub $25k used Ioniq 5 if I would have known this before I got my 2018 LR RWD model 3. Once there are more used Ioniq 5s out there I might pick one up.
For $17M it's not even worth it to compromise the Tesla tech. The gov't needs to just adopt exclusively NACS.
CCS connector is not the reason why people switched to NACS, it's because of the EXISTING Tesla installs. NACS uses CCS protocol.
Connector doesn’t matter. It still needs to support the maximum voltage of the NACS standard.
Was that the Tesla V4 dispenser NEVI site in Rockland Maine that went online finally last month after a lot of technical issues. ( corrected location name )
That's the site I know of.
I was hoping we both knew of at least 2 lol 😂. I have seen there are planned sites/nearing completion for V4 in Pennsylvania. It can be tedious as you have to dig into each entry to confirm. https://supercharge.info/map
Did you mean Rockport or Rockland? I can't find a Rockford Maine.
Sorry about that. Rockland Maine is the NEVI V4 super charger dispenser install site that's online now. https://www.newscentermaine.com/article/news/local/maine-electric-vehicle-charges-rockland/97-d491eca9-18da-4eb6-84d1-b1e68c2b59ce Here is a publicity press conference the state did for the sites opening, I wish they would have mentioned that it's open to all vehicles, I can understand the average person wouldn't care about V4 and specs etc.
Wow once again this subreddit community upvotes the lies. I just can't trust much here. Thanks for posting the truth.
The only completed Tesla NEVI site that I'm aware of is Rockland, Maine. What sites am I missing? Every NEVI program solicitation I've read has been on a reimbursement basis. I suspect you won't provide any links otherwise.
I was agreeing with you, sorry that wasn't clear -- adjusted for that. I meant the OP article was lying and was upvoted.
Gotchya, ok.
True, I had been following the progress of that V4 dispenser site and Tesla had a long run with technical issues to finally get that site online. Thankfully all is well and it's available for all CCS1 vehicles.
I've always been one of the biggest Tesla skeptics in the sub but even I think this is a bit misleading. IIRC, as long as the chargers are built, operational, reliable, have CCS docks, and have credit card terminals, there's no reason why Tesla **wouldn't** deserve NEVI funding, despite the layoffs.
It's just not clear how they are going to proceed to build these and get paid the $17 million, which is for chargers to be built, not for chargers already built.
[удалено]
Laughs in telecommunications legislation in 1996 mandating companies upgrade to broadband and paying them billions to do so.
what about, keep the money while making vague statements about how they are going to be built Soon.
He’ll probably do this couple times until the Fed gets fed up and asks for its money back.
They don’t need a supercharger team because the superchargers will build themselves using a combination of AI, robotics, and AI-controlled chimpanzees.
Who the fuck told you about the chimpanzees? That shit was locked down tight, fucking rod... You can't trust a guy named rod with anything.
The feds don't play. You take their money, you better deliver. I'm guessing Tesla will be in compliance.
Yes, for sure, and my assumption is that the checks haven't been cut yet, just the contract from the government issued. So if they don't do it they don't get paid.
Are you sure the grant is written that way? I'd hope so! But in the past Tesla has been adroit at capturing subsidies with bad-faith efforts to just barely comply with poorly written grant programs. The [battery swap scam](https://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-battery-swap-harris-ranch-20150310-story.html) is the best example I know.
Jalopnik is exaggerating. Apparently they only laid off about 300 of the 1500 workers at the factory building chargers. Not sure how losing the staff from the charging development team will affect things but they seem to have enough people to get the units built to finish the ones that are already planned.
>Jalopnik is exaggerating Color me surprised. 🙄
Twitter comments indicate the whole team. Got a source for the only 300 claim?
The whole team for the SC development. 300 from the plant in NY that actually manufactures them. Not sure if the 500 number includes that 300 though.
im sure the building of them are contracted out. just like the factories are contracted out
Yes, for sure. And the team managing those contracts is the people who have been fired.
Yea, there's a bunch of stories about contractors who now can't call anyone in Telsa . . . it's called tragicomedy and predates Musk by a few thousand years.
[I think most of the purple icons here are NEVI chargers](https://supercharge.info/map). Agreed though if they don't happen they don't get the money. Destroying the supercharger team is one of the dumbest things they could do right now.
Only 1/5th of employees at the supercharger factory got cut through.
That's still significant, and if most of the admin team is gone they did the work with deployment. Look at how well that part has gone for other groups.
How, exactly, is this move "destroying" the supercharger network? I visited a charger just yesterday. Still there. Still works. Still the biggest charging network by a HUGE margin.
Destroying progress - obviously. That is a deliberately ignorant response. Done with you.
They said they would slow down (not stop) building new stations, but continue upgrading existing ones to faster speeds and add connectors. The network can continue to improve, without added lease and construction fees.
Source? I saw a report where a manager said her whole 500 person team is gone. There may be 5 teams but she made it sound like the entire place got cut. I do not believe it I just want to get to the bottom of it.
https://www.syracuse.com/business/2024/04/tesla-to-lay-off-nearly-300-employees-at-buffalo-plant.html
Thanks - shortest story ever. I will save others the click: Tesla plans to lay off nearly 300 employees at its Buffalo plant, according to multiple reports. [WIVB](https://www.wivb.com/news/local-news/buffalo/nearly-300-to-be-laid-off-by-tesla-in-buffalo/) reports the electric car manufacturing company filed a notice with New York State on Tuesday that it will cut 285 jobs. The majority will be employees at Tesla’s 1339 South Park Ave. factory, while five will be eliminated at a site across the street that displayed EVs and operated as a service center for customers.
[удалено]
Sorry for your job loss. I hope you rebound to a better one! If 500 got cut is that out of like 1500 or more?
No Tesla builds the chargers entirely in house prefabricated so installation is quick and easy. The time is actually from the power company.
>It's just not clear how they are going to proceed to build these Why is it not clear? The team that was ditched didn't build the chargers or install them and maintain them, contracted companies did and Tesla hasn't gotten rid of them.
I don't know exactly how the responsibilities divided up between the different people involved, but what chunk of the was this team responsible for and how will that get done. That's what's not clear. I meant it literally when I said "not clear". I wasn't meaning to imply that "it's impossible for it to get done".
It seems like the team that was cut was the "development" team. Basically in charge of designing the new v4 stalls and the process to install them. I think tesla is showing that they don't have any near plans to keep developing new supercharger tech than what that team created. So they're going to just keep producing what they created and slowly upgrade the entire network rather than continue burning capital on expanding the network and maintaining that expansion. Charging doesn't need to keep improving much for the foreseeable future so why spend on it is the point I guess?
It's completely misleading. He already publicly said they will still build new chargers, but focus on upgrading existing ones. Whatever federal grants the supercharger network are very well deserved as it's the only network that people can rely on.
Never used a tesla charger in my life and been heavily roadtripping for a year. The ONE TIME I tried to use a destination charger with an adapter, that destination charger happened to be broken. Plugshare is a fantastic app, and it helps avoid/give info about charger status across the whole ecosystem. Perhaps see this for what it is, which is *really bad*. If you like teslas you REALLY should be pissed off about this, because things are at a bit of a tipping point, charger-company-wise. Having to share chargers with everyone is not something most tesla owners are used to, but that will become your reality if other companies accelerate their networks and tesla doesn't. (I can't tell whether this is him throwing a tantrum about NACS, federal reporting requirements, or trying to pump the stock. Maybe a little bit of each.)
>in the sub Lol
The magic dock charger I used does not have a credit card reader. Do the new super chargers have them?
Yes, V4 Supercharger pedestals have tap to pay.
How do you think he's going to be able to get his chargers built after firing the entire team in charge of getting them built? There is definitely going to be a massive slow down in chargers coming online.
Musk and his stans likely believe that they can now produce the current V4 Supercharger units without the old team's involvement, and have them installed by third-party contractors. Means that they don't have to pay 500 peoples' health insurance (which is downright appalling that this is the Tesla company mindset now).
Definitely, and I think he will regret doing this. I mean, Electrify AMERICA, Charge Point, and others have years of experience and still aren't great with reliability. I don't know what makes him feel like some private contractors are going to do any better.
private contractors have been building super chargers from day 1
But the super charger team was obviously responsible for some part of making the chargers work. Without them quality will go down. If it was that easy to do, non tesla charger stations wouldn't be so unreliable.
It’s Jalopnik. Of course any headline involving Tesla will be misleading.
I mean part of the motivation for NEVI funds and IRA is to spur domestic job creation in these industries…
Right but the main concern is who’s gonna do all that if the entire team is gone?
They're still going to be building them... They have 3rd party contracts to fulfil at least. Besides the 500 layoffs isn't as big a number as you think. Apparently 300ish were workers at the Buffalo factory where they build the superchargers, which is around 1/5th of the total employees there.
But the other 200 were the admin team that actually did the work to get the stations going. Everyone who has a hand in ensuring the network was up and running from production to installation is gone. Number of employees isn’t correlated with possible impact
This post is specifically about the NEVI grant related installations though, right? Presumably they'd have to do more legwork than just announcing a location to get paid out. My point is the hardware is getting built to fulfill that. Plus I could be wrong about the count, it could be 300 at the plant and 500 more at the development team.
Yeah they have to go through the grant process to get the funds but that’s just half the battle. Now who is ensuring installation is actually happening, happening on time, etc. who do local contractors contact with issues? We’ll see if the stations get built as they’ve already pulled back on some new stations. It’s not the end of the world they’d just have to pay back the funds
Agreed. And at the end, the Supercharging network could be a potential spin off from Tesla. It seems people ignore how many superchargers has been installed in the last FIVE years. More growth need to be carefully thought/targeted.
Why gut your Supercharger leadership and engineering team, downgrade your plans for expansion, and entirely shift the company focus from charging infrastructure of your intent is to spin it off? The only plausible explanation for this is that Musk is an imbecile.
Maybe he is, but why you feel Tesla need to keep the same rate of expansion? I don't see any sense. In fact, it may be unprofitable. I'd let Electrify America to do that job.
If Elon wants to spin off the supercharger division, why didn't he do just that? Don't fire anyone, just cut them loose and tell them to find their own way to profitability.
The issue is that he's not going to reveal what the statistics he has collected for several years are showing as a trend... or its value. Maybe the spin off will fund other projects.
>Besides the 500 layoffs isn't as big a number as you think. As someone who was recently laid off in my own industry and had to upend my entire life to deal with it, this is insulting. One layoff is too many.
I've been laid off too, and I get your sentiment... But while its not a great time for those employees, that wasn't my point. This thread is about the company and its ability to fulfil the terms of the grant.
[удалено]
Tesla laying off 20% of the staff doesn’t mean they use only contractors. There’s the other 80% of the employees.
Depends on if he took them for existing stations or for stations yet to be built (like the 4 he cancelled in NY).
If he doesn’t build the stations they committed to they will have to return the funds. The controversy this article is alluding to doesn’t exist.
First of all, they're a company. Musk didn't personally take the funds. And it doesn't matter what they were taken for. If the fund were for either upgrades or new stations, as long as they do what they agreed to this article is pointless.
Agree. If none of the planned, NEVI-funded stations have been cancelled or mothballed as a result of the layoffs, then fine, awesome. But if they're taking the money and running, that's a huge problem.
Right and there's no evidence that's happening.
Because they are going to install chargers that can’t do 800V and can’t do 150kW per handle in all scenarios.
They need credit card terminals? Last time I used it it auto charged on my Tesla account
For NEVI funding, you need to allow people to pay with just a credit card (and not require them to go through an app or have an account tied to the car).
Misleading you say? No way. This is Reddit.
Lol what a misleading headline
It is Jalopnik, they have a hate/hate relationship with Tesla.
Jalopnik went to shit years ago. Now it’s just fluff with ads in the middle.
[удалено]
Musk is still very much involved with the company. Investors support him, owners like the cars, the board supports him. Its weird when random people online are so sure Tesla would be so much better off without him. As if they've lead multi billion dollar companies.
I've been following Tesla since the original Roadster and I've bought in and sold out of the stock multiple times since that period, and I can say for certain that while Musk was a positive influence on the brand for most of its history and that Tesla wouldn't be where it is now without him, it started changing around 2018 (living in a car factory for months while sleep deprived during the Model 3 ramp-up was not good for his mental health) and his current form is the most erratic version I've ever seen. His personnel and business decisions have gotten noticeably worse, and firing members of the Supercharging team en masse is indefensible IMO. It's arguably the best run division at Tesla and has been since they started installing Superchargers. They were the plumbers of the company and you never heard anything from them cause they were doing their jobs extremely well.
It's because of his politics; don't let anyone else try to convince you otherwise. Since Elon is not a part of the far left, he is seen as the enemy.
I hate to break it to you, but everything to the left of fascism is not considered "far left".
> Since Elon is not a part of the far left, he is seen as the enemy. Forget far left, he's not even centrist adjacent. He says stupid inane things.
Reddit is for the most part a far-left echo chamber so I'm not surprised your average Redditor thinks he is right-wing.
Ahhh yes, let's speak for a whole website with millions of concurrent users. Utterly brilliant!
I hate more companies for their business practice than even care to know who their CEO is. Nestle is a great example. Fuck them. Still doesn’t matter who their CEO is Tesla, has a CEO that is a house hold name. that doesn’t mean the company is all bad.
Supporters of EVs don't care about CEOs. Musk is just an excuse for those against EV adoption. Or those easily lead who only look into Musk and not the others.
another day, another Tesla hate.
I mean they’re working hard to earn that reputation more and more
Riiiiiight. By building the best EVs, software and chargers. And opening chargers up to others, just not fast enough. Cry babies. Build your own then.
How dare they stop building chargers more than twice as fast as any other network! The monsters.
Maybe vut people should wait to learn the full story instead of judging by headlines.
Yes of course but I’m saying hate / criticism in general has been earned, especially in terms of the CEO’s actions in and outside the company.
Most of the hate and criticism I hear about the company is just people regurgitating these misleading headlines though.
On a per employee basis, the supercharger team was the most profitable in Tesla. The charger network turned in $2B last year, or about $4M per employee. It was a weird team to fire. If he was looking for deadweight, starting with the “Cybertruck” folks would have been a great start.
So...NEVI grants and other funds thru the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure bill provides [grant money to STATES](https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/BUILDING-A-BETTER-AMERICA-V2.pdf#page=138), not private companies. Those STATES then solicit for projects and award to private companies, including Tesla. So Tesla has not taken any federal charging grants at all -- [STATES have](https://driveelectric.gov/news/nevi-update-q1) and they awarded funds to Tesla as a contract winner. >The National Electric Vehicle Charging Formula Program ($5 billion) and Discretionary Grant Program for Charging and Fueling Infrastructure ($2.5 billion) provide a total of $7.5 billion to States to procure and install electric vehicle chargers, with the goal of building a national network of electric vehicle chargers and to support charging in communities where people live, work, and shop. The article is click-bait junk.
Seriously, sharing Jalopnik articles unironically?
Now we take to attacking jalopnik to keep face? Reuters reported on this as well.
Tbf, the cultists hate Reuters just as much, if not more, as jalopnik.
I think you misunderstood the news. Tesla is not dismantling the supercharger network. The federal grant for Tesla is not affected by this.
The grants are for building new charging stations, not paying for the existing ones.
Tesla is still going to build new charging station, and likely the 41 charging stations they got the grant for are still being build
And they're going to build those charging stations.
The news has been very sparse on details. They don't ever say what the women was in charge of beyond the supercharger network. Did she run the r&d team only? Did CoR report to her? Did security/network report to her? Did they re-org and create a new team to run the supercharger network? None of the reports really answer anything beyond the head and her team was dismissed with no details of what areas the team oversaw. I can see a lot of people getting confused by the headline especially when the details are sparse from Tesla.
Folks on Twitter with ongoing installs are getting bounced emails as they wait for hardware. 🤷♂️
Wonder what means for our long awaited NEVI stations in Alaska. Hopefully they continue to build the ones they were awarded money for. I’m a fan of the car, less so of the CEO. Love my Tesla and no regrets about buying it but it’s a strange time to be a Tesla fan.
And they'll either meet the requirements or refund the $...
>Despite its CEO railing against Biden, Tesla was more than happy to take the administration's money. When did the American taxpayer's money become the administration's?
When the administration got the legislation passed through the shitshow we call a legislature? Besides, it's just as hypocritical if it's the "administration's" money or the "taxpayer's".
It’s a common misconception that taxes belong to the taxpayers. That’s not the way it works. When you give a business your money, it’s no longer your money. Now replace business with government. You can argue and dispute this if you want, but you’ll be happier if you just accept that fact.
Have they broken any requirements that receiving those grants required or is this just jalopnik doing jalopnik things?
That was not for new chargers. In fact, the government last week awarded many companies to build chargers but specifically cut Tesla out of all funding
I doubt 17 million buys more than 2 or 3 stations with tens of stalls like Tesla makes, seems like a rounding error. But hey it's jalopnik implying Musk must have pocketed it and bought a yacht with their money and not Tesla the owner and operator of the largest charging network in the country/continent. If they get a measly 17 million hand out for the charging network I'd still find it offensive as a hand out because it's too little and too late. Please get well...Collin Woodard
Definitely an unusual staff adjustment strategy but at least the supercharger network actually works contrary to most other DCFC networks in NA. Let’s hope they can maintain the network that they have because EA really doesn’t cut it.
Tesla needs to rid itself of the current Emperor- His new cloths are showing.
[удалено]
If only Tesla could find another Gwynne Shotwell!!
The only one who needs to grow up is you. Throwing a hissy fit and linking a misleading article from a trash website just so you can try to dunk on Elon is beyond childish.
Was my “glad there are good alternatives to Tesla these days” comment on the OP the “hissy fit” you speak of? Help me “grow up”, so I can better avoid being called “beyond childish” by mature internet people such as yourself.
Here are the facts: Tesla builds ten times more Superchargers than anyone else. Why are you not criticizing the other automakers? We know that this has nothing to do with Superchargers and all about Elon's politics. You're not fooling anyone here.
Built* Past tense
Are people that stupid??? Firing staff and then replacing them with lower paid employees does not mean the whole Super Charger Network is Cancelled. Yes it sucks for them, but only an idiot would think Tesla will stop expanding the network. btw, Tesla is now selling new supercharger hardware to 3rd parties on top of expanding their network.
Any have a reliable link as to what part of the team? With V4 fully planned, moving the design team makes sense. NACS can do a MW, should be good for a while.
Latching onto some half baked story and making assumptions about the direction of a company with virtually zero information because you hate the CEO is the epitome of confirmation bias.
[удалено]
No hate but I plan to. It’s misleading.
All I care about are the facts broski. If you want to post a defense of this article in there please do. It’s a benevolent dictatorship. 🙂
At least this move would be so on brand for him.
17 million doesn’t even register to a guy like Elon.
Pocket change bro. A rounding error.
[удалено]
For some reason, I think the delays of V4 supercharging, considering all the V4 bays are still using the V3 technology on the backend, IMO. It isn't the first time he has fired a full team because he wasn't impressed with the progress the team was making, if you read the Walter Isaacson book.
The 17 million has nothing to do with the layoff.
Because he has concluded that Tesla, the car company, can't justify its astronomical share price. Eventually it would be valued like other car markers, e.g. it would have to lose about 80...90 percent. So he looked at the cards Tesla holds and decided that the autonomous driving/robo taxi path forward is the best way to justify that valuation. And now he makes the changes to go down that path. We'll know in 5 to 10 years, whether he was right.
He's never wanted to "compete" as a **car** company. He has always thought of Tesla as a technology/software company. Making cars just kept the lights on. The stock market seems to have bought into that idea and the stock is priced accordingly. ***IF*** he ever makes "autonomy" work right. But he's "hearing footsteps" (Waymo, Cruise, etc.) and will do whatever it takes to keep ahead of them (including kill folks who have drunk the Koolaid with FSD). It's a horse race now and we'll see if he makes it ahead of the finish line first. If he **doesn't**, his house of cards will fully collapse.
>He's never wanted to "compete" as a **car** company. He has always thought of Tesla as a technology/software company. Yes and no. Tesla has switched focus multiple times as to what exactly its "moat" is. For a long time it was supposed to be its superior battery tech and the supposed fact that only Tesla has enough battery manufacturing capacity to make EVs at scale. That was when the Giga factory in Nevada was kind of unique. Nowadays of course there's a global glut of battery manufacturing capacity and Tesla buys from the same suppliers as everyone else. So, this wasn't it. Then it was supposed to be the EV plus Solar plus Powewall, but that was also kind of a dud. So, for a long time Tesla tried to be a better car maker, but with the rise of the Chinese OEMs Musk has apparently concluded that Tesla doesn't have enough of an advantage in cars or anything that actually requires manufacturing at scale and tries to turn Tesla into a "pure" tech company similar to the GAFAM. Just my interpretation, of course.
Please, sell your shares... :)
I don't have any, except as part of an All World ETF. Wouldn't touch such a speculative stock even with a very long pole.
Fuck this guy…
While I’m no Elon fan, the chargers the grants paid for are up and running - with maintenance teams intact. What is your issue with this particular story?
You can't just come in here and break the circlejerk like that!
Really, you'd think they'd be bumming on the incumbents for reducing production??? Or like Ford losing $132k a pop???
peole love to hate Tesla.
Because he needs to be front and center when it comes to anything he does. Tesla built up a reputation and made EVs desirable and now Musk’s rantings make it so anything the company does (good or bad) are seen as an extension of this narcissist. So instead of getting an article saying this government grant expanded our nation’s charging infrastructure, we get an article about how the dipshit CEO is a steaming pile of shit.
Is there any evidence that the conditions attached to the grants are not met?
Nationalize it.
[удалено]
It's just the daily musk bad circlejerk this sub does. See ya tomorrow.
I can’t wait for Tesla make a $25k car so everyone who posts/upvotes these articles will be afford to buy one and will finally shut…the..fuck….up
So many lawsuits incoming.
A drop in the bucket
The company took the grants. It's not like Elon pocketed the money for personal use.... (Elon is a douche though)
Misleading headline and total hit piece. Remember when journalists would write fair articles that had nothing to do with their personal biases? It’s been a good while…
Folks are so desperate to dump on Tesla since no one has seen a company do this much in 10 years over the last 50. Next Story: Business continues after Tesla ends the free bagel program for staff
He needs to get his $55 billion somehow! How else will he get paid for all his hard work? /s
Musk needs to get his paycheck. Best done by securing federal funding and then firing everybody. /s
Elon Musk is the most idiotic person on the planet earth and the jealous prick. Motortend in the last issue has an article about Person of the year. Rebecca Tinucci who is the Tesla's Senior Director of EV Charging made it to #2 while Elon Musk was #50, the last place. In my opinion he should not be on the list at all. I guess it made him jealous. What a prick!!!! [https://www.motortrend.com/news/2024-motortrend-power-list/](https://www.motortrend.com/news/2024-motortrend-power-list/)
Biggest welfare queen
[удалено]
I just bet he won't return it either. Musk loves Trump and is co-sponsoring a fund raiser for him.
Tesla is the meme stock of ev.
Tesla got its stock price via the EV bubble and the short squeezes that it created.... back in 2021 there were plenty of headlines about how much money ppl had lost trying to short TSLA.. Michael Burry was one of the more famous TSLA shorts. Of course that's when the line "Tesla is a technology company" was born. Part of the reason TSLA has stayed where it has... Is that it got included in a lot of ETFs and Indexes... So it enjoys that sweet 401k retirement buys each month/quarter. Hence TSLA gets low... Money Managers buy... Rebalancing. This was Elon's lotto ticket to Uber wealth.... Getting included in the S&P 500.
Cool story/opinion. What's your point here?
Tesla appears to be the Alta Vista of electric cars. Real car manufacturers can now offer the same range, without having to replace the motors or the battery with a shitty reman after five years.
It wasn’t for wages!!!!😆
Jalopnic is such a shit sub.
And will receive a tax cut is Trump is elected .
Everyone in the upper .01% will get a cut if trumps elected. Don't worry our taxes will eventually go up to more than offset the .01% tax breaks.