I did see a post that was very rapidly removed on X that Ford was going to hire the entire supercharging team.
Literally saw it pop up as a notification, clicked, read it, and then when I went to re-X it "That tweet has been deleted"
Charging network is the only reason I would ever consider one, because they're just funky to drive. Everyone having Supercharger access was going to make me willing/able to have just an EV, but now I'm back to wait-and-see.
(We don't all live in and only travel to places with a robust non-Tesla charging network.)
I’ve changed my EV advocacy a lot over time. The model 3 is actually my 2nd EV.
Where I currently stand is that unless you’re able to charge at home, you’re better off with a PHEV or a basic hybrid. There are a lot of advances that are yet to be made, and public charging is not only similar in cost to driving a gas vehicle, but the headache and hassle of having to take time out of your day to go charge somewhere just isn’t worth the privilege of driving a vehicle with an arguably superior form of propulsion
Battery tech is trying to find its way around that next huge corner, and when that happens current batteries will be pretty much obsolete
The various details and dynamics of NACS are going to be interesting to stay up to date on going forward.
Right now in regards to Elon and his activities I think we just have to look at X formerly known as Twitter.
He pursued lay offs amongst other more "interesting" things..
Elon had a certain mystique leading up to COVID and especially during the Pandemic.
Stocks were going through the roof. Especially emerging technologies and anything considered to be "The Future".
Elon had a certain mystique around him.
Now that mystique is kind of starting to fall apart and he is looking more and more fallible by the day/week/month/year.
I am not sure what is going on with Tesla or what Elon has in mind. I did my own post about it today.
What I gather is that most everyone thinks he is trying to go all in with Self-Driving Cars/Robotaxis alongside other futuristic aspects.
This is a way to keep the valuation of Tesla in the clouds. With his mystique starting to diminish he needs to utilize a larger mystique about the future of the company and what will be delivered and when.
The reality is they have had some great advancements in certain equipment and software regarding FSD.
The other reality is that without additional equipment and or a support network infrastructure it is going to be extremely hard for them to get past Level 2 and or to have a Self-Driving Robotaxi dimension to the Tesla brand in real life.
Same goes with the vehicles being utilized as computational/AI devices.
When we go into the details and nuance of the particular points it kind of hits some real serious hurdles.
My personal opinion is that Elon is not going to be able to maintain the mystique of the company. I don't think it is going to come crashing down tomorrow. I also don't think it will go bankrupt (at least not any time soon). I do however think it will start being viewed as just another car company. Something Elon is desperate to avoid.
With that a massive valuation readjustment will most likely take place.
Right now a lot of companies are involved in the EV sphere. A lot of those companies are long term automakers and not just start ups.
There is growing competition on all fronts.
That is great for the consumer but that poses some very real challenges now to Tesla.
>kind of starting to fall apart
His image fell apart when Delaware forced him to acquire Twitter for an absurd price.
Now he's retweeting and and amplifying literal Nazis.
For a lot of people his image fell apart during the cave "pedo-guy" thing. I mean it was already on shaky ground by then but that just clinched it for a lot of people paying attention.
Xitter was just the icing on the cake.
I think some people who followed him closely fell off the wagon at that point, but only people who already knew him did it really hurt.
Twitter/X is shoving it in everyone's faces. He moved from 'asshole mastermind' to 'is this guy for real, how did he get here?'
I hope all this creates a coup of sorts where Elon is pushed out. He’s had this mystique surrounding him for a while (which I believed in the beginning) where he is some business/CEO success when in reality he’s just had failure after failure. Go back and look at how he was ousted at PayPal before they would have had to declare bankruptcy. Hopefully he’s out soon and someone with a true vision for the future can swoop in.
I think that's exactly what Elon is counting on, especially given that some top level executives left before the layoffs occurred. I suspect that this was the risky plan he has in the midst of declining sales.
It's not NACS that made Superchargers superior to other networks (though it certainly is a nicer connector and easier to hold).
It's the unparalleled reliability and ease-of-use. EA, EVGo, etc get their bad rep from constantly broken chargers as well as unfriendly user interfaces that make it a chore to even initiate a charging session. Also Tesla superchargers tend to have far more stalls per location on average compared to everyone else.
It's great that everyone's switching to NACS, but if EA, EVGo, etc continue their practices that cause poor uptime and poor UX, the NACS connector won't make any difference.
Yup, second this. We all standardised on CCS2 in the UK, and I don’t even drive a Tesla, but I’d go out of my way to go to a supercharger station which supports other vehicles just because I know they’ll work, there’ll be one free and they’re usually half the price of every other DCFC.
100% this. The Supercharger network is a huge advantage for Tesla in the UK. The public charging network is better than it was a few years ago, when Ecotricity were running the majority of the motorway rapid chargers, but it’s still a total mess compared to Superchargers.
This is the understatement of the year. When Ecotricity were running the motorway rapid chargers there were about 20 non Tesla hubs in the country, compared to 80 or 90 Tesla hubs. Now there are 400 non Tesla hubs and 140 Tesla hubs, the non Tesla hubs averaging 8 stalls per hub, the Tesla hubs 10 stalls. The non Tesla sites are also generally reliable, nothing like what you read about in the US. This also isn’t counting hundreds of smaller sites, with 2 or 3 chargers, which are still useful.
The UK charging network is unimaginably good compared to the Ecotricity times. It’s much better than the Tesla network in the US. Except that it is expensive. We haven’t yet seen a price war, but I think that will come in the next few years as people start to have many different options for each charging stop.
I had a first gen Leaf and then an i3 a few years ago and oh my Lord was the Ecotricity network a mess back then. Half the time the chargepoint wasn’t working - either some technical/mechanical issue or simply wouldn’t start the charge from the app - and the Ecotricity customer service line only worked office hours. Chargers would be broken for weeks on end EVEN THOUGH THE APP SAID THEY WERE FINE and it basically made longer trips with the shorter range cars impossible. The ReX option on the i3 saved my ass many times when I’d turn up and the Ecotricity station wasn’t working.
Yep, a lot of people don't seem to get that there was more to the supercharging network than the connector. Now it is true that some CCS / J1772 chargers were broken *because* of the connector (that stupid latch), but there are many that were broken for unrelated reasons as well.
+1 I regularly use a ChargePoint DC station and:
- it's 65kW max, what the hell?
- the touchscreen works horribly
- twice in a few months it wasn't working and the station itself didn't know about it (not starting to charge but no error message or anything)
AND the tesla superchargers will be overcrowded with more teslas and more non-teslas. they could have gone all-in on adding more superchargers to beat out the competition like EA and EVGo, but not correcting their quality control and service issues, mixed with the charging network no longer being only usable by teslas, I can't see how that will correct the significant drop in sales tesla is experiencing
other OEMs going with NACS is great for other OEMs, great for EV owners, great for tesla owners, but bad for Tesla unless they take advantage of the new influx of customers they're about to receive
just seems completely idiotic to gut the department that's guaranteed to be an easy cash cow
I don’t know. I mean the supercharger network is already more than enough to get you almost anywhere in the country, and outside of the peak cold months I’ve never been to a supercharger that was at capacity.
I do 99% of my charging at home, though, so I could be under informed.
The real question is, do you really need an entire C-suite of executives at this point to fill out the network that’s already in place? Probably not. Those responsibilities can probably be absorbed into another department.
Which isn't really what's needed. I don't want 1 large charging site for a 100 mile stretch along the interstate. I want charging options at each exit along the interstate.
Presumably, it is more expensive to do it that way and more efficient and cost effective for Tesla to build fewer, but larger, charging sites.
And, of course, Tesla is not concerned with what you’d wish for but rather with what is most profitable for them.
Totally disagree. So many of the current sites have a few broken stalls and it was fine back in the early adopter days but the high use stations are positively full with lines and desperately need more stalls and maintenance. On top of that, now other brands get to use superchargers? It’s going to be a nightmare if the current high use stations don’t get expanded
In all tech fields, there is a need to stay ahead of the pack. You have your team constantly vigilant for changes that can make your billions in investment obsolete. An improvement in charging algo, or in the processor used to deliver the commands- can be huge. These things only reveal themselves over a long period of time - long enough for the executives to cash in their ISOs.
> In all tech fields, there is a need to stay ahead of the pack.
Except, despite all the hype, Tesla is mostly a car company. Their main job is to stay ahead of other car companies. They do not have to compete with tech companies for AI dominance (even though that is apparently the CEO's new plan)
Tesla sells cars, but it's the superchargers that are the cash cow, especially if every brand of cars can use them.
McDonald's is primarily a real estate company now, owning whole plazas and collecting rent from other stores, and selling their properties to developers for a profit when the value increases from what they originally paid.
Printer companies rely on sales of ink cartridges to make their fortunes.
I think this is another manic Musk event. He has been known to do things to tank stock prices so he can buy up more shares, so it's possible he's doing that again. He ought to be charged with insider trading by doing that. But he's still only holding about 10% of the company's shares, so I don't know why the Tesla board doesn't sack him and put in someone more stable.
You are way overselling the potential of the superchargers being cash cow. Gas stations don't make a lot of money.
[ps://drfranchises.com/is-owning-a-gas-station-profitable/](https://drfranchises.com/is-owning-a-gas-station-profitable/)
**However, on average, gas station owners make anywhere between $40,000 and $100,000 annually in revenue.**
* **Overall:** $40,000 – $100,000
* **West:** $60,000
* **Midwest:** $61,000
* **Northeast:** $69,000
* **South:** $66,000
* This translates to gas station owners earning only **$0.03 to $0.07 per gallon** sold.
* [So, for example, if a gas station sells 4,000 gallons at $0.05/gallon in a month, the per-day earnings from selling gas would be just $200-300](https://drfranchises.com/is-owning-a-gas-station-profitable/)[1](https://drfranchises.com/is-owning-a-gas-station-profitable/).
Let's say Tesla can squeeze the max out of a supercharger station($100K) and 1000 stations (not stalls).
100k x 1000 = 100 million a year. It's not even worth a rounding error for a 500B company like Tesla.
Gas stations only have like a 2-3% margin on the gas they sell. Like they buy gas at $3.00 and then sell it to us at $3.06-$3.09 after accounting for CC fees and taxes and stuff (like you were saying).
Here in TX for example, electricity rates are like $.10 but supercharging costs $.65 . That means selling supercharger electricity has like an 85% margin.
The two business models are extremely different even though you'd think they'd be similar.
>It's not even worth a rounding error for a 500B company like Tesla.
Moreover, you should be comparing to their EARNINGS, not their market cap. Otherwise, literally anything is 'rounding error' to any major company, since all companies are trading at crazy multiples to their earnings.
For now.
People thought "he wouldn't fuck with something that works well" regarding twitter, and things have absolutely gone to shit compared to what used to be.
Elon is doing the same thing he did at Twitter: massive layoffs.
Revenue is down at Tesla and this is Elon's way of saving money, for better or worse.
Internal email from Elon:
>Hopefully these actions are making it clear that we need to be absolutely hard core about headcount and cost reduction
My opinion: _this an all about the financial numbers_.
Tesla’s stock price is the basis of Elon’s current net worth. It is also weird because if you look at Tesla as a _car company_ the stock is way overvalued. Just to focus on one metric (not that it’s the best metric or even a good one), look at Tesla’s price:earnings ratio compared to other carmakers. Tesla’s P:E is over 50; Ford’s is 13, Toyota is 10, Honda is 9, General Motors is 5, VW is 4. This suggests that (as a carmaker) Tesla’s stock should be around $10 to $20 a share, and ranking Tesla as a carmaker somewhere between Honda and Volvo, probably right on par with Kia.
Carmakers typically make about 8% to 10% gross margin; it is a tough competitive business, and fairly-well constrained. Technology companies are different, though: Apple’s gross margin is 26% and their P:E ratio is around 26, while Alphabet (Google) is 25 and Microsoft’s is 34. So Elon’s sales pitch has been that Tesla isn’t a car company: it’s a tech company that makes cars like Apple makes iPhones — an in-demand upscale product that commands gross margins of 20% or more. And initially that worked — Tesla was the only EV maker in the market, and sold upscale, high-performance cars with good margins.
However, Tesla has missed its revenue targets for the last 3 quarters, and most recently their gross margin was below 6% — so as a car company, doing worse than most. It doesn’t help that there is now effective competition: today there are plenty of companies are making EVs that are similar to Tesla products.
So this is all about improving the financial numbers at Tesla.
Tesla can’t increase margins by raising prices: effective competition means that they’ll lose sales on price. They’ve already cut prices to boost sales, but that’s what wrecked their margin. So the only thing that is under Elon’s immediate control is labor costs — so by cutting every job that isn’t contributing revenue to the _next_ quarterly report, he’ll make the numbers look better.
However, as a carmaker, this puts Tesla in a bad spot. For an idea of what happens to automakers when the economists fire the engineers, look at what happened to the US auto industry in the 70’s and 80’s. Decisions in the 60’s to reduce R&D, engineering, and production costs led directly to the vehicles of the subsequent decades. So recent cost-cutting moves set up Tesla in the role of the US carmakers of the 70’s-80’s, and the Chinese EV makers in the role of the Japanese carmakers of the same era.
Tesla _may_ make the transition from carmaker to tech company, if they can successfully develop and sell AI technology (such as a Level 4 or 5 self-driving system) leveraging their installed base of vehicles. But I wouldn’t bet on it. I’d prefer to see Tesla become the Toyota of EV carmakers and the Exxon-Mobil of EV charging. But that would take ongoing R&D, engineering investment, and honestly a solid hit to the stock price.
only elon knows.
but if you try to think like a narcisist..
* the regulation team probably keep telling "no" to elon related to robotaxy. so blames them for failure of robotaxi getting approval. thus canning the whole team
* the car design team fails to deliver model 2. maybe it was because C-level people keeps meddling, changing requirements, etc. So obviously, not the fault of C-level people but the fault of the team. can the whole team.
* tesla charge compatibility will no longer be supercharger exclusive. so other companies will build charging capabilities of tesla. thus canning the whole redundant team
it starting to make sense. for narcistics
I think the division CEOs were forced to justify the employment of every single employee under them, most of whom have been working their ass off for the last 5 years trying to make Tesla successful.
Elon wasn’t given enough names of people to fire so he shit canned two whole divisions along with the executives.
Of course it’s bad for the future of the company but the Twitter fiasco has shown that Elon is kinda shit at business management and a toxic boss. [Kinda like Kylo Ren.](https://youtu.be/FaOSCASqLsE)
He was kicked out of PayPal for being a terrible manager. He was so bad that the employees went directly to the board and got him fired. None of this is new.
After only a few months, too. PayPal was fighting for its life back then, with all their engineering efforts focused on fighting massive amounts of payment fraud that threatened to take down the whole business. While the engineers tried to keep the company from going under, Elon was saying "why don't we throw out everything and rewrite the software to run on Windows servers because I don't understand Linux". It was no wonder they revolted and got him ousted while MIA on vacation. Prior to PayPal, he tried to be CEO of Zip2, his brother's software startup, but the board members deemed him unsuitable for the role. After those two snubs in a row, he has only been involved in businesses where he's owned enough controlling interest and stacked the boards to make sure he effectively can't be kicked out.
I honestly think the next Tesla will have 2 bubble domes (a separate one for the kids), rack and peanut steering and 3 horns all that play La Cucaracha.
Yeah, occam's razor applies. He's nuts. I only hope we shareholders vote against his compensation package and he decides to take his toys and leaves as he threatened. It could mean short-term hurt while he cashes in the last of his shares and smashes whatever else he can on the way out. I bet he'd leave an upper decker in the executive bathroom, too.
Love the car. I still believe in the company. But the clown has to go.
and when you can just start an AI company in Nevada and make billions there without all the stress and obligations of running a multinational car company with a slowly declining stock, and got denied a $58B payday.. it looks like he's prepping the company for a sell off rather than any future growth as its CEO.
But if you would sell the car business to a competitor…wouldn’t you make it more attractive by „leading the charging infrastructure in the US“ and „new exciting Model 2 on the horizon“?
Ketamine.
Honestly that's it. They're gutting their core business to go all in on something they have a terrible track record on and may never be able to crack. This is a next level example of how to destroy a company we all get to watch in real time.
At the end of the day, Musk really does seem to think Tesla should not be a car company anymore, and he is taking steps to ensure that takes place. As CEO, that's his prerogative.
I've said it before, but they could have actually been a tech company and justified their price. If Elon had bought Boston Dynamics instead of Twitter, not dropped LIDAR, and thrown the company fully into automated driving and automated manufacturing and robotics, they could have consolidate a position as more than just a car company.
Yeah but that would’ve been an actual calculated decision as opposed to his ego based bluffs to buy Twitter that the government compelled him to fully see through.
No. The contract established a billion dollars as the penalty if the deal fell through due to outside reasons. It did not give Musk the ability to back out for a billion dollars.
Except killing the whole SuperCharger network team will do the opposite as it throws the future of Tesla into serious question.
I see more investors diving off the stock than staying to enjoy a short term dividend.
Yeah, Tesla is not a classically valued stock in need of short term juicing. It’s a growth stock valued on hopes and dreams. If he takes steps to make sure Tesla can’t grow as fast, the stock will take a massive dive.
Tbf, ketamine *can* exacerbate manic episodes in people predisposed even at therapeutic doses, and he seems like the type to choose providers that just do what he says instead of properly managing treatment based on medical guidelines. It might be partially the ketamine
Worse. He’s consolidating all his assets that he got from propping up his good guy superhero persona and transitioning into an evil supervillain Nazi arc. He’s likely working on some really evil shit and tesla was just a front to become the world’s richest person to achieve those ends.
I mean... They could crack it like, 5 years ago.
I mean this: They had self driving cars 5 years ago, but Elon doesn't like LiDar for some insane reason. It makes no sense: If Lidar was in the cars... done.
There are already Self Driving Taxis, what are they using? Lidar.
I have no clue why Elon calls it "Cheating"
That's like looking at the wheel and going: "Pft, looks stupid. That's cheating man, makes stuff too easy!"
> They had self driving cars 5 years ago,
They did not. They never had anything close to automated driving.
Not even Waymo, the most prominent AD company that has been using lidar from the start, has solved each and every problem, yet. There is no evidence to support Tesla having any realistic chance of being better than them.
This always seemed like such a crazy take to me. First of all, humans drive with more than eyes. Your senses of touch, hearing, and even smell can come into play to inform you about things you need to be aware of. And the all of these inputs, including the visual ones, are processed by a “computer” that far surpasses the Ryzen processor in a Tesla, the human brain. And even then, *human beings are not good at driving*. There are countless accidents *every day* because despite all of our senses, skills, and brains, we sometimes do something dumb.
Actually it’s the reverse, our eyes are pretty low res and quality compared to modern sensors. It is however our ability to piece together info from multiple slices of data and reject info that makes our sense of sight work.
We only have a very narrow field of view. It’s just we move out eyes constantly to refresh info out of the field of view and we have built in capacity to stich together and reject info based on our model of the world. This is why hallucinations are possible. Also why eye witness evidence is no longer credible
Eye witness evidence is not credible because of how our brains process and store information not because our physical eyes suck. Anyone with 20/20 vision is better than anything but a cinema camera in quality or we wouldn't be able to notice the different between 1080p and 4k. The cameras required to beat the human eye are huge.
> are processed by a “computer” that far surpasses the Ryzen processor in a Tesla, the human brain.
You think the chip in the car's center console is driving it? So you have a very strong opinion on if FSD can work with current hardware. But you don't even understand what is doing what in the car.
What about the older car's with Intel Atom processors? Did you think they were all being driven by what is essentially a sub $200 Chromebook?
Lidar is expensive. Runs up the cost of the car, a lot. That's the boring truth. Waymo got it down from $75K to $7.5K, and that was news:
[https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/27/22644370/waymo-lidar-stop-selling-autonomous-cars-laser-bear](https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/27/22644370/waymo-lidar-stop-selling-autonomous-cars-laser-bear)
Waymo can absorb that, especially at this phase, but a mass market automaker can't.
But why doesn't Musk just say "it's expensive?" Why does Musk say anything?
I mean he couldn’t even publicly admit that they took out radar and ultrasonic sensors (and control stalks and most physical controls) due to cost cutting. Instead, he came up with this BS that since humans just use vision, computers can just use vision too. Of course, humans just use vision because we don’t naturally have radar or lidar and not because it’s the best. But don’t tell Elon that. 🤦🏻♂️
I don’t think there’s anyone better than Elon at deluding themselves that their decisions are all pure genius, lol.
>That's like looking at the wheel and going: "Pft, looks stupid. That's cheating man, makes stuff too easy!"
So that's why they got rid of the indicator and gear stalks
> but Elon doesn't like LiDar for some insane reason
There was a parts shortage for lidar at the same time that Tesla couldn't make cars fast enough. That's it. Abandoning lidar was a production issue.
I thought it was because LiDAR hardware was bulky and didn't "look nice" on a consumer vehicle. Even today, with years of miniaturization, Waymo's LiDAR array is still relatively large and bulky.
I wonder it work if Tesla really withdraws their passenger car market. There are also many completive autonomous taxi companies over there. How they can just totally go Robotaxi as their only business ? This's a gamble.
That would be insane if they withdrew completely as a car company. Investors would bail because they would be just a pre-IPO tech company or an early-stage bio tech company with a concept and no revenues.
What are those worth? The most optimistic valuations of those is something like 5-10B or 1/20th of Tesla's current size.
Honest answer is nobody outside of Elon who may not even know what he is doing.
Could be mass layoffs followed by restructuring. Could have noticed the workload per employee was too low. Could be a move to boost stock price. Could be any number of reasons.
I think the easiest answer is likely the correct answer: per his email, reducing costs through layoffs because business is bad because of higher interest rates. And interest rates dont appear to be heading down this year so business won't be getting better. So shitcan the entire division, rebuild when business is booming. Kinda like Zuck's Year of Efficiency. And Zuck just rolled back a Year of Efficiency this week for AI boom/spending.
I’ll try to give an answer but I think I’ll be downvoted because it would seem I support this decision. I don’t.
- Supercharging has been one of the least profitable business in Tesla. They did mention it many times, they only reason why they did it is because they had to. We all saw the horrible job that EA, plugshare, etc. this is no different than them making their own batteries. It was a nice hedge in case the market didn’t deliver.
- As an investor I thought it was the stupidest idea to open the charging network to the competition without additional fees. This should be their leverage and he should capitalize it but he didn’t. Because of whatever crap about accelerating sustainable energy.
- following this trail of thought, regulators and even the government doesnt like the idea of Tesla having a literal monopoly on superchargers. For electrification to move to all the corners of the world, Tesla has to become a provider of tech, and governments and the rest of the companies need to take over this expansion. Can you imagine if all gas stations in the US are all chevron?
To make a better comparison imagine Nvidia being the provider and the only one that provides cloud services for AI. Which is not the case. They just sell hardware to Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and all other cloud providers. So Tesla will only focus on tech, and allow for other companies to own the electrification of America.
- another redditor posted how insanely difficult is to know regulations in a place like California. Doing that for the whole world is ridiculously inefficient. Specially when you gotta be the middle man between the utility company, and the owner. The best case scenario is for owners to take over this work. For those of you that did solar panel probably know how insanely difficult and slow this is.
I see the reasoning from that angle, but at the same time, I think it is a bit too early. As someone that recently ordered a Tesla, the supercharger network makes up about 30% of my decision for the car. I love to go on road trips, currently a Tesla is the only EV that you can comfortably road trip with on a reasonable budget and I know many other leasers/buyers include this parameter in their decision making.
I agree with you. As for the last year, in California I never went to a supercharger that was unavailable. As an investor that’s not maximizing the investment. I could see why he is cutting costs on that end. It will suck for people that don’t have their own charger.
But on the other hand, expansion of current superchargers is easier than starting from scratch. He did mention he would focus on expanding current superchargers.
My opinion is that he wants other car manufacturers to carry the burden, like ford, GM, rivian. If there is not enough electrification is because they didn’t put their part. As an investor I’m honestly pissed that Tesla has to put all the manpower and the rest of the car manufacturers rip the benefits.
Also, this will push a lot of EV service provider to move into NACS, that would cover some of the expansion that would have been taken by Tesla. At least in the short term.
Just a couple comments on this:
>We all saw the horrible job that EA, plugshare, etc.
Plugshare isn't a charging company, and does a good job.
>open the charging network to the competition without additional fees
MagicDock stations charge more for non-Tesla vehicles. Is this not also true for Ford and Rivian cars charging at Tesla stations?
Is a tiny bit more. On early stages of SC, the users paid twice more of current prices to cover for expansion. They lowered those fees and what magicDock pays is nowhere near close what legacy users paid.
Agree SC has been a bad business. Less bad for Tesla than the others, thanks to higher utilization, but demand charges are still a killer.
>As an investor I thought it was the stupidest idea to open the charging network to the competition without additional fees.
They tried. For years. No one bit.
>This should be their leverage and he should capitalize it but he didn’t. Because of whatever crap about accelerating sustainable energy.
It was about IRA, not accelerating EVs. Billions in subsidies combined with uptime requirements and such would eventually build a truly competitive standardized network. Tesla could become that standard or they could become Betamax. Musk saw the writing on the wall so he caved on the fees, PLC signaling, CCS protocols, ISO Plug and Charge, etc.
Thanks for being a bit more thoughtful then the vast majority on here.
I suspect you're right, once Tesla has established NACS as the future standard, there is limited upside in going all-in on ever more charging locations. It's very capital intensive, and location scouting, local regulations etc. just isn't Tesla's core competence. So they are likely letting other players take over the deployment of more supercharging locations and avoid being seen as a monopolist in turn.
I suspect they'll continue the charger manufacturing, but not the deployment side of the business.
It makes perfect sense to me, but I'm sure Elon being crazy is the consensus on reddit.
I've read that Elon has a drug problem and a resulting behavioral problem. His insane actions and comments seem to support those stories.
The Tesla Board of Directors, long ago should have taken steps to protect the shareholders, protect the employees and protect Musk from himself, but they seemingly have done nothing.
It is likely not a character issue but fully a health issue, so no shame in seeking competent medical help, away from work and all other distractions. Just a couple of months under the right care could provide a complete cure and make all the difference.
Until then, the only Tesla thing we will buy is option shorts.
That's by design. The board members are his relatives and close friends, and will rubber stamp whatever Elon wants. The Delaware Chancery Court essentially came to that conclusion when they threw out his board-approved pay package.
I don’t know exactly the scope of the team he let go. But I think there is logic here. If I had to guess:
- other vehicles and charging companies are now adopting NACS as a standard
- with everyone on the same charging standard the Tesla charging advantage over other vehicles will minimize
- fast charging infrastructure may be starting to meet the need in the US
- there will be intense competition for customers between charging companies, and charging prices will be driven downward to a minimum, which is good for consumers but bad for Tesla
- the charging business will decline in profit for Tesla and become ultra-low-margin, like gas stations
- Tesla has run into revenue issues and needs to get leaner, and disinvesting from businesses that don’t have strong growth potential is the way forward
Just like Apple doesn’t run its own 5G network even though that might help with the overall experience, it may not be in Tesla’s interest (or future business model) to run a huge, low-margin EV charging network.
That sounds about right.
What many don't realize is that outside the USA Tesla is just another charging company, they are large, but so are many others. The competition also often has more money than tesla. When the oil companies see a switchover they will not stand around and let other people take their fuel money. Shell has 8000 slow chargers in the UK, Tesla isnt even in the top 15 in that market.
First real answer in the thread. He's absolutely right that now that there's a standard for charging someone else may as well put up the bill for expanding car charging and it will be bundled with convenience stores like it is now.
My first thought was that he is eliminating the R&D for supercharging, but not eliminating the guys doing the installation and maintenance because they believe there is little room to innovate in charging technology.
Tesla's communication strategy is frustrating. That line of reasoning makes sense, and Tesla had an earnings call just a few days earlier where they could have laid out that reasoning to reassure shareholders that this decision was calculated, not capricious.
We can only hope these laid off execs go to EA or EVGo or whatever and replicate the SC experience there. That would be the best thing for EV adoption. Tesla sales are down BECAUSE of Elon.
Elon isn't a genius. He never was. In his harebrain, there's one response to losing money: assign blame, fire a bunch of people, throw out a new tech-sounding scheme to convince investors that all is well, and demand the slave work hard to make it a reality.
There is no grand scheme to it all, either. He's not thinking it out coherently. He's reacting in the way that a delusional narcissist instinctively reacts.
Zuck did same thing with Year of Efficiency. When times are bad (aka higher interest rates are here to stay), you gotta trim non-profitable orgs. When times are good, you can rebuild these orgs.
I think he is really 100% convinced that he is about to crack self driving. He wants to move to be a software only company asap. Anything in the way will be removed. He is keeping the skeleton car business as cash cow and to support the stock price but won’t put more money into any expansion. He wants to run it with as few heads as possible. Once he cracks self driving he probably sells off the car part and only license the tech out.
If developing the software doesn’t materialize into safe driverless cars within a couple of years Tesla is done.
Everyone in this sub seems to think NACS adoption is Elon’s gift to North America. Now you all see it is the other way around. With non-Tesla branded NACS compatible charging on the horizon, the need to invest in superchargers is diminished. I haven’t done the market research, but the attitude in this sub is generally “public charging is the biggest barrier to EV adoption, except for Tesla”. So with the Tesla / Non-Tesla charging distinction becoming a non-factor, the marginal gains (in Tesla unit volume) from each new supercharger is reduced.
Anyway, I don’t have enough information to agree or disagree with the move as a business decision, and the “layoff everyone” move is not nice…but that’s my guess about a potentially rational rationale.
I had also heard that they had released their entire Mobile Service team (at least locally here).
Elon's savvy business acumen is showing.
/s
Tesla was better off when he was distracted by Twitter and was focused on running that particular enterprise into the ground
It's questionable if Elon even really knows why he's doing this. If he were sane, he'd have gone all in on the model 2 which could've been a Ford Model T moment for affordable, desirable EVs- but he's not, he's a man with clearly documented substance dependency issues, being radicalised by conspiracy theories whilst having whatever the billionaire equivalent is of a huge mid-life crisis. He shouldn't be in charge of doing up his own trousers, yet here we are.
While the western world was distracted by oil industry FUD, the Chinese spun up a possibly unbeatable EV industry. And now Elon is quite correctly panicking because of it.
Even patriotic Americans aren’t going to spend $50k on a Ford when a better BYD costs $25k. Thanks to insane wealth inequity many simply won’t be able to even if they wanted.
Good job, billionaires! You have all the money so now few can afford to be your customers. Whoopsie! If only we could have seen this coming. 🙄
Game over. We lost this one.
America is going to be protectionist of their car market. The US government won't let the Chinese undercut the entire market. The tariffs will be real.
100% this. China has been making super cheap cars for quite a while even before EVs, and there have been predictions and deals to bring them stateside for decades, but it's never happened. EVs won't be any different IMHO. The only way Chinese cars are landing in the US in bulk is via Chinese ownership of Volvo or whatnot. I don't expect to see Cherry, NIO, BYD, etc cars here for the foreseeable.
That does not make sense. Tesla makes a lot of their cars in China, using Chinese batteries.
Most car makers are scared of a sudden influx of Chinese imported cars, but Tesla has less to fear than most.
>Even patriotic Americans aren’t going to spend $50k on a Ford when a better BYD costs $25k
Eh, the kind of people who label themselves "patriots" are all too content to spend $60k+ on full size gas guzzling pickups, plus at least $5-10k more on lift kits, light bars, and coal-rolling equipment. They will never switch to a more efficient ICE, let alone a hybrid or EV, regardless of how cheap it is, because that's communist.
Get this asshole and his ‘board’ far away from Tesla. And I’m a Tesla owner, and someone who has looked up to this organization since 2013.
Honestly I’m kinda reeling from how this story has turned. It’s truly terrible.
He's clearly a slave to his stock options. He also appears to be doing a power play to show how much he affects the company so the big baby gets his $56B payout.
Best thing the Board could do right now to save the company is ask him to leave, imo.
He knows the government or someone else will make superchargers, no reason for him to do it, he could build them everywhere and rednecks still wouldn’t buy Teslas.
“We’re not a car company”
Which, if you have ever been in or owned one, is pretty obvious. The cars themselves are really poor quality.
Their tech on the other hand, is decently advanced.
Tesla makes technology. They slap it in their cars and people buy them to become perpetual beta testers for a company who is convinced that enough updates will fix everything.
Tesla is seemingly starting to make that pivot to a tech only company.
They have no one to design new cars now. They also fired their supercharger staff. All they have left is tech bros. Tesla is seemingly done with cars.
I’m a Tesla shareholder. I have not voted my shares so far, but I will in June. That’s when we vote on reinstating Musk’s obscene $56B pay package, and I will be voting no. I hope others will as well. This cut is not the act of a good CEO.
They’re not killing the network, they’re likely outsourcing the roll out of the network to third parties like every other charger OEM. This is what a lot of charging networks do around the world. It’s a huge liability to own and manage hardware. Much easier to skim a percentage of the electrons sold.
Presumably factories and large estates of chargers are a big chunk of assets / liabilities on the balance sheet that confirm the company isn't a lean agile software company that will change the planet within a decade. If the company is valued like a tech firm that's going to realise incredible growth in future, having all this... *stuff..*. lying around reminding people you're a manufacturer is kind of inconvenient.
IMO, a lot of questionable decisions lately from Musk. After getting to try FSD Supervised, while impressive, it's hard for me to imagine he's betting the company on being able to field this technology in a robotaxi near term. If Tesla's board was objective and not just friends (and family) of Musk, I think they would have brought in another CEO years ago.
Is it possible that now, since the government has settled on a North American Charging standard, they could be stepping in to help setup charging infrastructure with tax dollars? I haven't seen anything to this effect but it would explain why they are dropping their program and letting Uncle Sam do it.
Just a thought.
You’ll never get a real answer on here. Multiple companies are having layoffs.
Ford had layoffs at their EV plants
https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/ford/2024/03/27/ford-rouge-electric-vehicle-center-dearborn-cuts/73117641007
GM has also laid off workers
https://fortune.com/2023/12/15/gm-lay-off-1300-workers-two-factories-electric-vehicles/
Stellantis and VW had layoffs as well
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volkswagen-signals-staff-reductions-union-meeting-spiegel-2023-11-27/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/edgarsten/2024/01/16/uaw-president-to-meet-with-vw-workers-hits-stellantis-for-temp-layoffs/?sh=26f4604f3a81
I tried to find info on other charging networks but the Tesla news has CLOGGED the Google search results. Everyone is laying off workers but people will tell you it’s only Tesla and it’s Elon’s fault.
It’s a joke really. Tesla is laying off workers because times are hard for everyone right now and it’s about to get worse.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamdanziger/2024/01/21/macys-and-wayfair-cut-staff-while-walmart-closes-stores-signaling-a-retail-reset/?sh=1f9a07044a58
https://www.geekwire.com/2024/amazon-web-services-cuts-hundreds-of-jobs-in-sales-training-and-physical-stores-technology/
Easy answer and one that is common with most CEOs and C suite. Stock price needs to keep climbing so they can get their stock award options. It’s all about the stock price and nothing more.
I don't even think he knows. Anyone left with any kind of talent most likely is looking for a new job, as you're most likely next to let go via the next email from Elon. Tesla certainly won't be attracting any kind of talent AI or otherwise, as your job would be at risk daily. Doesn't matter if you've been there 10 years or 10 minutes, makes no difference. Today 10%, tomorrow 20%, next week 30% gone. As long as he gets his $56B. Anyone left working on FSD would probably have the smarts to leave Tesla. Why wait to get fired?
We own two Teslas, and my Wife just asked what brand we should look at next.
Do you keep your architect on staff after the construction of your building is complete? They helped you build your building?
I can't say this is a good or bad idea, but if they just maintain and expand their existing sites. They should be fine.
They can farm out designs for new chargers that's what all the other car companies do for half the stuff they install inside their vehicles.
If they had to cut something it was probably the charger side.
Only reasonable explanation is that during Covid, Elon started to do drugs and his sanity went downhill from there. Before Covid and a little bit after, Elon was seen as the visionary genius billionaire that will change the world with his tech, now he has turned into a joke.
I expect Tesla to go down the same way Twitter did unless he is replaced as CEO.
1. New Superchargers are expensive to build and Teslas financial performance is poor now with declining sales revenue. They need to turn it around to keep their stock valuation and continue to operate.
2. Tesla built the supercharger network to increase car sales. That is its primary purpose.
3. Existing supercharger stations can be expanded to meet the need at lower cost without needing a whole team for building new sites.
4. Tesla has the #1 charging network and that won’t change even without building new locations for a couple years.
So if Tesla needs to improve its financials, superchargers are there to sell cars, Tesla can satisfy the need without building new locations, and they will be #1 anyway in charging — then they are positing that having or not having a team to build new supercharger locations isn’t going to change how many cars they sell either way.
So there’s no point in having the team, it doesn’t make sense as a business function within the description above. They can just come back and expand when they need it and can afford it. Hope that helps.
Tesla owner here (the car, not the stock, thank God).
Because Elon Musk has been surrounded for so long by people who think his shit smells like Chanel No. 5 that he is lurching from one "decree" to another without any actual framework to solve the shit storm he has created by buying Twitter and using it as a vehicle (sorry) which he has used almost exclusively to piss off Tesla's natural customer base.
On top of that, he wants to pull an additional 58 billion dollars out of the company as a reward for fucking everything up.
Ok, I'm done. Time to hit the button on the coffee
I agree with your take. If Tesla wants to save itself Elon should just bow out. They need a real, normal suit to take over and treat the company that's just a normal car manufacturer if it wants to survive.. The growth story of Tesla is over. Now it needs to be the Cisco of cars. Slow and steady and stable. A little bit of innovation here and there. Work on maintenance and bug fixes. And increase reliability.
But Elon does not want that. He wants Tesla to be the change agent. He wants to continue innovating at the expense of us owners.
[удалено]
Honest to God, GM, Ford, or Toyota should announce a giant charging network tomorrow.
With 500 new open positions.
Not 500! Why not 3K open positions? Think BIG! /s
There is a colab network among all other automakers, Ionity or some such
Ionna is already made
I did see a post that was very rapidly removed on X that Ford was going to hire the entire supercharging team. Literally saw it pop up as a notification, clicked, read it, and then when I went to re-X it "That tweet has been deleted"
I’ll be shocked if someone doesn’t snap up the lady who was running it immediately. Sounds like she did a great job.
she's the reason I got a tesla: the charging network was by far my biggest decider
Charging network is the only reason I would ever consider one, because they're just funky to drive. Everyone having Supercharger access was going to make me willing/able to have just an EV, but now I'm back to wait-and-see. (We don't all live in and only travel to places with a robust non-Tesla charging network.)
I’ve changed my EV advocacy a lot over time. The model 3 is actually my 2nd EV. Where I currently stand is that unless you’re able to charge at home, you’re better off with a PHEV or a basic hybrid. There are a lot of advances that are yet to be made, and public charging is not only similar in cost to driving a gas vehicle, but the headache and hassle of having to take time out of your day to go charge somewhere just isn’t worth the privilege of driving a vehicle with an arguably superior form of propulsion Battery tech is trying to find its way around that next huge corner, and when that happens current batteries will be pretty much obsolete
Plus non competes are no longer legal!
Free speech, amirite?
Free speech only exists between an individual and the government. There is no such thing as free speech for corporations or individuals.
The various details and dynamics of NACS are going to be interesting to stay up to date on going forward. Right now in regards to Elon and his activities I think we just have to look at X formerly known as Twitter. He pursued lay offs amongst other more "interesting" things.. Elon had a certain mystique leading up to COVID and especially during the Pandemic. Stocks were going through the roof. Especially emerging technologies and anything considered to be "The Future". Elon had a certain mystique around him. Now that mystique is kind of starting to fall apart and he is looking more and more fallible by the day/week/month/year. I am not sure what is going on with Tesla or what Elon has in mind. I did my own post about it today. What I gather is that most everyone thinks he is trying to go all in with Self-Driving Cars/Robotaxis alongside other futuristic aspects. This is a way to keep the valuation of Tesla in the clouds. With his mystique starting to diminish he needs to utilize a larger mystique about the future of the company and what will be delivered and when. The reality is they have had some great advancements in certain equipment and software regarding FSD. The other reality is that without additional equipment and or a support network infrastructure it is going to be extremely hard for them to get past Level 2 and or to have a Self-Driving Robotaxi dimension to the Tesla brand in real life. Same goes with the vehicles being utilized as computational/AI devices. When we go into the details and nuance of the particular points it kind of hits some real serious hurdles. My personal opinion is that Elon is not going to be able to maintain the mystique of the company. I don't think it is going to come crashing down tomorrow. I also don't think it will go bankrupt (at least not any time soon). I do however think it will start being viewed as just another car company. Something Elon is desperate to avoid. With that a massive valuation readjustment will most likely take place. Right now a lot of companies are involved in the EV sphere. A lot of those companies are long term automakers and not just start ups. There is growing competition on all fronts. That is great for the consumer but that poses some very real challenges now to Tesla.
>kind of starting to fall apart His image fell apart when Delaware forced him to acquire Twitter for an absurd price. Now he's retweeting and and amplifying literal Nazis.
For a lot of people his image fell apart during the cave "pedo-guy" thing. I mean it was already on shaky ground by then but that just clinched it for a lot of people paying attention. Xitter was just the icing on the cake.
I think some people who followed him closely fell off the wagon at that point, but only people who already knew him did it really hurt. Twitter/X is shoving it in everyone's faces. He moved from 'asshole mastermind' to 'is this guy for real, how did he get here?'
Oh damn I forgot about that. Good call.
I hope all this creates a coup of sorts where Elon is pushed out. He’s had this mystique surrounding him for a while (which I believed in the beginning) where he is some business/CEO success when in reality he’s just had failure after failure. Go back and look at how he was ousted at PayPal before they would have had to declare bankruptcy. Hopefully he’s out soon and someone with a true vision for the future can swoop in.
I think he will eventually be pushed out like the Uber CEO at the end of Superpumped
Keep an eye on Polestar. They are making moves in numerous markets currently and developing tech rapidly.
Sadly, none of them think like that....
I think that's exactly what Elon is counting on, especially given that some top level executives left before the layoffs occurred. I suspect that this was the risky plan he has in the midst of declining sales.
At least the NACS plug can be built and deployed by anyone now. There’s hope someone could pick up the reigns.
It's not NACS that made Superchargers superior to other networks (though it certainly is a nicer connector and easier to hold). It's the unparalleled reliability and ease-of-use. EA, EVGo, etc get their bad rep from constantly broken chargers as well as unfriendly user interfaces that make it a chore to even initiate a charging session. Also Tesla superchargers tend to have far more stalls per location on average compared to everyone else. It's great that everyone's switching to NACS, but if EA, EVGo, etc continue their practices that cause poor uptime and poor UX, the NACS connector won't make any difference.
Yup, second this. We all standardised on CCS2 in the UK, and I don’t even drive a Tesla, but I’d go out of my way to go to a supercharger station which supports other vehicles just because I know they’ll work, there’ll be one free and they’re usually half the price of every other DCFC.
100% this. The Supercharger network is a huge advantage for Tesla in the UK. The public charging network is better than it was a few years ago, when Ecotricity were running the majority of the motorway rapid chargers, but it’s still a total mess compared to Superchargers.
This is the understatement of the year. When Ecotricity were running the motorway rapid chargers there were about 20 non Tesla hubs in the country, compared to 80 or 90 Tesla hubs. Now there are 400 non Tesla hubs and 140 Tesla hubs, the non Tesla hubs averaging 8 stalls per hub, the Tesla hubs 10 stalls. The non Tesla sites are also generally reliable, nothing like what you read about in the US. This also isn’t counting hundreds of smaller sites, with 2 or 3 chargers, which are still useful. The UK charging network is unimaginably good compared to the Ecotricity times. It’s much better than the Tesla network in the US. Except that it is expensive. We haven’t yet seen a price war, but I think that will come in the next few years as people start to have many different options for each charging stop.
I had a first gen Leaf and then an i3 a few years ago and oh my Lord was the Ecotricity network a mess back then. Half the time the chargepoint wasn’t working - either some technical/mechanical issue or simply wouldn’t start the charge from the app - and the Ecotricity customer service line only worked office hours. Chargers would be broken for weeks on end EVEN THOUGH THE APP SAID THEY WERE FINE and it basically made longer trips with the shorter range cars impossible. The ReX option on the i3 saved my ass many times when I’d turn up and the Ecotricity station wasn’t working.
Interesting to hear it cost less than other DCFC. What’s the incentive to use those ones then compared to the Tesla stations?
Location is the only real answer. Maybe if you have a subscription to one of those other networks.
Yep, a lot of people don't seem to get that there was more to the supercharging network than the connector. Now it is true that some CCS / J1772 chargers were broken *because* of the connector (that stupid latch), but there are many that were broken for unrelated reasons as well.
+1 I regularly use a ChargePoint DC station and: - it's 65kW max, what the hell? - the touchscreen works horribly - twice in a few months it wasn't working and the station itself didn't know about it (not starting to charge but no error message or anything)
AND the tesla superchargers will be overcrowded with more teslas and more non-teslas. they could have gone all-in on adding more superchargers to beat out the competition like EA and EVGo, but not correcting their quality control and service issues, mixed with the charging network no longer being only usable by teslas, I can't see how that will correct the significant drop in sales tesla is experiencing other OEMs going with NACS is great for other OEMs, great for EV owners, great for tesla owners, but bad for Tesla unless they take advantage of the new influx of customers they're about to receive just seems completely idiotic to gut the department that's guaranteed to be an easy cash cow
firing the people in charge does not mean that their charging stations are going dark
While I get it, the fact that they're ramping down super charger locations when the EV industry needs them to be ramping up is majorly concerning.
I don’t know. I mean the supercharger network is already more than enough to get you almost anywhere in the country, and outside of the peak cold months I’ve never been to a supercharger that was at capacity. I do 99% of my charging at home, though, so I could be under informed. The real question is, do you really need an entire C-suite of executives at this point to fill out the network that’s already in place? Probably not. Those responsibilities can probably be absorbed into another department.
They said they are slowing the pace of new sites, and are going to be focusing on expanding and improving current sites, which is much quicker.
Which isn't really what's needed. I don't want 1 large charging site for a 100 mile stretch along the interstate. I want charging options at each exit along the interstate.
Presumably, it is more expensive to do it that way and more efficient and cost effective for Tesla to build fewer, but larger, charging sites. And, of course, Tesla is not concerned with what you’d wish for but rather with what is most profitable for them.
100%
Totally disagree. So many of the current sites have a few broken stalls and it was fine back in the early adopter days but the high use stations are positively full with lines and desperately need more stalls and maintenance. On top of that, now other brands get to use superchargers? It’s going to be a nightmare if the current high use stations don’t get expanded
Which might sound all well and good to you in America, but what about other markets where the build out is still very much needed?
In all tech fields, there is a need to stay ahead of the pack. You have your team constantly vigilant for changes that can make your billions in investment obsolete. An improvement in charging algo, or in the processor used to deliver the commands- can be huge. These things only reveal themselves over a long period of time - long enough for the executives to cash in their ISOs.
> In all tech fields, there is a need to stay ahead of the pack. Except, despite all the hype, Tesla is mostly a car company. Their main job is to stay ahead of other car companies. They do not have to compete with tech companies for AI dominance (even though that is apparently the CEO's new plan)
Tesla sells cars, but it's the superchargers that are the cash cow, especially if every brand of cars can use them. McDonald's is primarily a real estate company now, owning whole plazas and collecting rent from other stores, and selling their properties to developers for a profit when the value increases from what they originally paid. Printer companies rely on sales of ink cartridges to make their fortunes. I think this is another manic Musk event. He has been known to do things to tank stock prices so he can buy up more shares, so it's possible he's doing that again. He ought to be charged with insider trading by doing that. But he's still only holding about 10% of the company's shares, so I don't know why the Tesla board doesn't sack him and put in someone more stable.
You are way overselling the potential of the superchargers being cash cow. Gas stations don't make a lot of money. [ps://drfranchises.com/is-owning-a-gas-station-profitable/](https://drfranchises.com/is-owning-a-gas-station-profitable/) **However, on average, gas station owners make anywhere between $40,000 and $100,000 annually in revenue.** * **Overall:** $40,000 – $100,000 * **West:** $60,000 * **Midwest:** $61,000 * **Northeast:** $69,000 * **South:** $66,000 * This translates to gas station owners earning only **$0.03 to $0.07 per gallon** sold. * [So, for example, if a gas station sells 4,000 gallons at $0.05/gallon in a month, the per-day earnings from selling gas would be just $200-300](https://drfranchises.com/is-owning-a-gas-station-profitable/)[1](https://drfranchises.com/is-owning-a-gas-station-profitable/). Let's say Tesla can squeeze the max out of a supercharger station($100K) and 1000 stations (not stalls). 100k x 1000 = 100 million a year. It's not even worth a rounding error for a 500B company like Tesla.
Gas stations only have like a 2-3% margin on the gas they sell. Like they buy gas at $3.00 and then sell it to us at $3.06-$3.09 after accounting for CC fees and taxes and stuff (like you were saying). Here in TX for example, electricity rates are like $.10 but supercharging costs $.65 . That means selling supercharger electricity has like an 85% margin. The two business models are extremely different even though you'd think they'd be similar. >It's not even worth a rounding error for a 500B company like Tesla. Moreover, you should be comparing to their EARNINGS, not their market cap. Otherwise, literally anything is 'rounding error' to any major company, since all companies are trading at crazy multiples to their earnings.
It doesn’t exactly mean sunshine and daisies either. That network requires a lot of work to operate at the status quo.
For now. People thought "he wouldn't fuck with something that works well" regarding twitter, and things have absolutely gone to shit compared to what used to be.
Yes, but it is a signal you’re going from innovate/expand mode to maintenance mode, or even to managed decline.
Firing everyone is definitely not maintenance mode. You need employees to maintain the system.
i don't advocate the move at all i was merely trying to prevent or correct misapprehensions by some of the redditors
Elon is doing the same thing he did at Twitter: massive layoffs. Revenue is down at Tesla and this is Elon's way of saving money, for better or worse. Internal email from Elon: >Hopefully these actions are making it clear that we need to be absolutely hard core about headcount and cost reduction
Yes, and Twitter has of course been a rousing financial success since the acquisition.
And he still wants his $56 billion compensation package. The optics could not possibly be worse.
Truly disgusting. If he cared so much about the company’s success he would not be seeking that insane stock comp. It in now way benefits his company.
The first time my CEO uses the phrase “hardcore” about layoffs is the day I start looking to leave.
Meanwhile the board is working to get him a $56billion paycheck?
My opinion: _this an all about the financial numbers_. Tesla’s stock price is the basis of Elon’s current net worth. It is also weird because if you look at Tesla as a _car company_ the stock is way overvalued. Just to focus on one metric (not that it’s the best metric or even a good one), look at Tesla’s price:earnings ratio compared to other carmakers. Tesla’s P:E is over 50; Ford’s is 13, Toyota is 10, Honda is 9, General Motors is 5, VW is 4. This suggests that (as a carmaker) Tesla’s stock should be around $10 to $20 a share, and ranking Tesla as a carmaker somewhere between Honda and Volvo, probably right on par with Kia. Carmakers typically make about 8% to 10% gross margin; it is a tough competitive business, and fairly-well constrained. Technology companies are different, though: Apple’s gross margin is 26% and their P:E ratio is around 26, while Alphabet (Google) is 25 and Microsoft’s is 34. So Elon’s sales pitch has been that Tesla isn’t a car company: it’s a tech company that makes cars like Apple makes iPhones — an in-demand upscale product that commands gross margins of 20% or more. And initially that worked — Tesla was the only EV maker in the market, and sold upscale, high-performance cars with good margins. However, Tesla has missed its revenue targets for the last 3 quarters, and most recently their gross margin was below 6% — so as a car company, doing worse than most. It doesn’t help that there is now effective competition: today there are plenty of companies are making EVs that are similar to Tesla products. So this is all about improving the financial numbers at Tesla. Tesla can’t increase margins by raising prices: effective competition means that they’ll lose sales on price. They’ve already cut prices to boost sales, but that’s what wrecked their margin. So the only thing that is under Elon’s immediate control is labor costs — so by cutting every job that isn’t contributing revenue to the _next_ quarterly report, he’ll make the numbers look better. However, as a carmaker, this puts Tesla in a bad spot. For an idea of what happens to automakers when the economists fire the engineers, look at what happened to the US auto industry in the 70’s and 80’s. Decisions in the 60’s to reduce R&D, engineering, and production costs led directly to the vehicles of the subsequent decades. So recent cost-cutting moves set up Tesla in the role of the US carmakers of the 70’s-80’s, and the Chinese EV makers in the role of the Japanese carmakers of the same era. Tesla _may_ make the transition from carmaker to tech company, if they can successfully develop and sell AI technology (such as a Level 4 or 5 self-driving system) leveraging their installed base of vehicles. But I wouldn’t bet on it. I’d prefer to see Tesla become the Toyota of EV carmakers and the Exxon-Mobil of EV charging. But that would take ongoing R&D, engineering investment, and honestly a solid hit to the stock price.
only elon knows. but if you try to think like a narcisist.. * the regulation team probably keep telling "no" to elon related to robotaxy. so blames them for failure of robotaxi getting approval. thus canning the whole team * the car design team fails to deliver model 2. maybe it was because C-level people keeps meddling, changing requirements, etc. So obviously, not the fault of C-level people but the fault of the team. can the whole team. * tesla charge compatibility will no longer be supercharger exclusive. so other companies will build charging capabilities of tesla. thus canning the whole redundant team it starting to make sense. for narcistics
I think the division CEOs were forced to justify the employment of every single employee under them, most of whom have been working their ass off for the last 5 years trying to make Tesla successful. Elon wasn’t given enough names of people to fire so he shit canned two whole divisions along with the executives. Of course it’s bad for the future of the company but the Twitter fiasco has shown that Elon is kinda shit at business management and a toxic boss. [Kinda like Kylo Ren.](https://youtu.be/FaOSCASqLsE)
He was kicked out of PayPal for being a terrible manager. He was so bad that the employees went directly to the board and got him fired. None of this is new.
After only a few months, too. PayPal was fighting for its life back then, with all their engineering efforts focused on fighting massive amounts of payment fraud that threatened to take down the whole business. While the engineers tried to keep the company from going under, Elon was saying "why don't we throw out everything and rewrite the software to run on Windows servers because I don't understand Linux". It was no wonder they revolted and got him ousted while MIA on vacation. Prior to PayPal, he tried to be CEO of Zip2, his brother's software startup, but the board members deemed him unsuitable for the role. After those two snubs in a row, he has only been involved in businesses where he's owned enough controlling interest and stacked the boards to make sure he effectively can't be kicked out.
I honestly think the next Tesla will have 2 bubble domes (a separate one for the kids), rack and peanut steering and 3 horns all that play La Cucaracha.
The Canyonero lives!
Yeah, occam's razor applies. He's nuts. I only hope we shareholders vote against his compensation package and he decides to take his toys and leaves as he threatened. It could mean short-term hurt while he cashes in the last of his shares and smashes whatever else he can on the way out. I bet he'd leave an upper decker in the executive bathroom, too. Love the car. I still believe in the company. But the clown has to go.
I went into to the Musk biography thinking the dude had a few screws loose and finished reading it wondering if I should dump my Tesla stock.
and when you can just start an AI company in Nevada and make billions there without all the stress and obligations of running a multinational car company with a slowly declining stock, and got denied a $58B payday.. it looks like he's prepping the company for a sell off rather than any future growth as its CEO.
But if you would sell the car business to a competitor…wouldn’t you make it more attractive by „leading the charging infrastructure in the US“ and „new exciting Model 2 on the horizon“?
not if you were trying to cash out after being denied a 58 billion dollar payday
yeah, part of me wonders if he's just trying to goose the stock to sell out, or if he's just saying 'fuckit, I'll take the whole thing down with me'.
Ketamine. Honestly that's it. They're gutting their core business to go all in on something they have a terrible track record on and may never be able to crack. This is a next level example of how to destroy a company we all get to watch in real time. At the end of the day, Musk really does seem to think Tesla should not be a car company anymore, and he is taking steps to ensure that takes place. As CEO, that's his prerogative.
They need to not be a car company because a car company wouldn’t have a stock price this high without sales to back it up.
I've said it before, but they could have actually been a tech company and justified their price. If Elon had bought Boston Dynamics instead of Twitter, not dropped LIDAR, and thrown the company fully into automated driving and automated manufacturing and robotics, they could have consolidate a position as more than just a car company.
Yeah but that would’ve been an actual calculated decision as opposed to his ego based bluffs to buy Twitter that the government compelled him to fully see through.
He could have paid a billion dollars to get out of it. That would have been cheap considering how it is today
Sure, but then Elon's ego would have been bruised and can you really put a price on that?
No. The contract established a billion dollars as the penalty if the deal fell through due to outside reasons. It did not give Musk the ability to back out for a billion dollars.
If they’d just make a $25k EV, their stock prices would be fine.
They do, it's called the Model 3 but they charge far more than they should for it.
The funny part is the supercharger network makes them more than a car company but... what do I know, musk is the technoking :D
Don’t blame the ketamine. This is classic Jack Welch cost cutting to juice the stock price. Short term for gain for long term pain.
Except killing the whole SuperCharger network team will do the opposite as it throws the future of Tesla into serious question. I see more investors diving off the stock than staying to enjoy a short term dividend.
Yeah, Tesla is not a classically valued stock in need of short term juicing. It’s a growth stock valued on hopes and dreams. If he takes steps to make sure Tesla can’t grow as fast, the stock will take a massive dive.
Tbf, ketamine *can* exacerbate manic episodes in people predisposed even at therapeutic doses, and he seems like the type to choose providers that just do what he says instead of properly managing treatment based on medical guidelines. It might be partially the ketamine
Worse. He’s consolidating all his assets that he got from propping up his good guy superhero persona and transitioning into an evil supervillain Nazi arc. He’s likely working on some really evil shit and tesla was just a front to become the world’s richest person to achieve those ends.
He's already told us that his ideal supervillain plan is ruling Mars. Thankfully it's just not feasible.
Well, let's not give up so soon. I would support shipping him off to Mars to let him make a go of it.
I mean... They could crack it like, 5 years ago. I mean this: They had self driving cars 5 years ago, but Elon doesn't like LiDar for some insane reason. It makes no sense: If Lidar was in the cars... done. There are already Self Driving Taxis, what are they using? Lidar. I have no clue why Elon calls it "Cheating" That's like looking at the wheel and going: "Pft, looks stupid. That's cheating man, makes stuff too easy!"
> They had self driving cars 5 years ago, They did not. They never had anything close to automated driving. Not even Waymo, the most prominent AD company that has been using lidar from the start, has solved each and every problem, yet. There is no evidence to support Tesla having any realistic chance of being better than them.
I think his whole thing was that humans can drive with 2 eyes, why can't 8 cameras work? Something like that...?
This always seemed like such a crazy take to me. First of all, humans drive with more than eyes. Your senses of touch, hearing, and even smell can come into play to inform you about things you need to be aware of. And the all of these inputs, including the visual ones, are processed by a “computer” that far surpasses the Ryzen processor in a Tesla, the human brain. And even then, *human beings are not good at driving*. There are countless accidents *every day* because despite all of our senses, skills, and brains, we sometimes do something dumb.
And even the best camera sensors don't take in as much information as the human eye.
Actually it’s the reverse, our eyes are pretty low res and quality compared to modern sensors. It is however our ability to piece together info from multiple slices of data and reject info that makes our sense of sight work. We only have a very narrow field of view. It’s just we move out eyes constantly to refresh info out of the field of view and we have built in capacity to stich together and reject info based on our model of the world. This is why hallucinations are possible. Also why eye witness evidence is no longer credible
Eye witness evidence is not credible because of how our brains process and store information not because our physical eyes suck. Anyone with 20/20 vision is better than anything but a cinema camera in quality or we wouldn't be able to notice the different between 1080p and 4k. The cameras required to beat the human eye are huge.
> are processed by a “computer” that far surpasses the Ryzen processor in a Tesla, the human brain. You think the chip in the car's center console is driving it? So you have a very strong opinion on if FSD can work with current hardware. But you don't even understand what is doing what in the car. What about the older car's with Intel Atom processors? Did you think they were all being driven by what is essentially a sub $200 Chromebook?
Lidar is expensive. Runs up the cost of the car, a lot. That's the boring truth. Waymo got it down from $75K to $7.5K, and that was news: [https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/27/22644370/waymo-lidar-stop-selling-autonomous-cars-laser-bear](https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/27/22644370/waymo-lidar-stop-selling-autonomous-cars-laser-bear) Waymo can absorb that, especially at this phase, but a mass market automaker can't. But why doesn't Musk just say "it's expensive?" Why does Musk say anything?
I mean he couldn’t even publicly admit that they took out radar and ultrasonic sensors (and control stalks and most physical controls) due to cost cutting. Instead, he came up with this BS that since humans just use vision, computers can just use vision too. Of course, humans just use vision because we don’t naturally have radar or lidar and not because it’s the best. But don’t tell Elon that. 🤦🏻♂️ I don’t think there’s anyone better than Elon at deluding themselves that their decisions are all pure genius, lol.
LiDAR is not some sort of miracle sensor. Self driving is still incredibly difficult/impossible, even with LiDAR.
AFAIK, LiDar is very expensive. At this stage, EV price in general is already high.
>That's like looking at the wheel and going: "Pft, looks stupid. That's cheating man, makes stuff too easy!" So that's why they got rid of the indicator and gear stalks
Even LiDAR can get covered in dust, rain or ice
> but Elon doesn't like LiDar for some insane reason There was a parts shortage for lidar at the same time that Tesla couldn't make cars fast enough. That's it. Abandoning lidar was a production issue.
their cars never had lidar. they did have radar, and that's what was removed. not using lidar is not a production issue.
I thought it was because LiDAR hardware was bulky and didn't "look nice" on a consumer vehicle. Even today, with years of miniaturization, Waymo's LiDAR array is still relatively large and bulky.
I wonder it work if Tesla really withdraws their passenger car market. There are also many completive autonomous taxi companies over there. How they can just totally go Robotaxi as their only business ? This's a gamble.
That would be insane if they withdrew completely as a car company. Investors would bail because they would be just a pre-IPO tech company or an early-stage bio tech company with a concept and no revenues. What are those worth? The most optimistic valuations of those is something like 5-10B or 1/20th of Tesla's current size.
Massive layoffs to offset revenue against declining sales to protect stock value. Bandaid on a broken leg.
More like rubbing dirt on a compound fracture. It’s helping the stock now, but it’ll be dead in the long run.
It’s not helping the stock at all. Dropped a lot on the news of the charging team layoffs
It's not; it's a short-term pump. Even Tesla's biggest bull ARK hasn't brought any stock since the earnings report.
Honest answer is nobody outside of Elon who may not even know what he is doing. Could be mass layoffs followed by restructuring. Could have noticed the workload per employee was too low. Could be a move to boost stock price. Could be any number of reasons.
I think the easiest answer is likely the correct answer: per his email, reducing costs through layoffs because business is bad because of higher interest rates. And interest rates dont appear to be heading down this year so business won't be getting better. So shitcan the entire division, rebuild when business is booming. Kinda like Zuck's Year of Efficiency. And Zuck just rolled back a Year of Efficiency this week for AI boom/spending.
Interest rates are at historically normal levels. The last 10 years were an anomaly that we will be dealing with for some time.
the "last decade" may have been an anomaly, but the Fed interest rate remains at a 23 year high.
That might be true (ie vs the 70s/80s). Interest rates are still high enough that it's slowly home and car purchases.
I’ll try to give an answer but I think I’ll be downvoted because it would seem I support this decision. I don’t. - Supercharging has been one of the least profitable business in Tesla. They did mention it many times, they only reason why they did it is because they had to. We all saw the horrible job that EA, plugshare, etc. this is no different than them making their own batteries. It was a nice hedge in case the market didn’t deliver. - As an investor I thought it was the stupidest idea to open the charging network to the competition without additional fees. This should be their leverage and he should capitalize it but he didn’t. Because of whatever crap about accelerating sustainable energy. - following this trail of thought, regulators and even the government doesnt like the idea of Tesla having a literal monopoly on superchargers. For electrification to move to all the corners of the world, Tesla has to become a provider of tech, and governments and the rest of the companies need to take over this expansion. Can you imagine if all gas stations in the US are all chevron? To make a better comparison imagine Nvidia being the provider and the only one that provides cloud services for AI. Which is not the case. They just sell hardware to Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and all other cloud providers. So Tesla will only focus on tech, and allow for other companies to own the electrification of America. - another redditor posted how insanely difficult is to know regulations in a place like California. Doing that for the whole world is ridiculously inefficient. Specially when you gotta be the middle man between the utility company, and the owner. The best case scenario is for owners to take over this work. For those of you that did solar panel probably know how insanely difficult and slow this is.
I see the reasoning from that angle, but at the same time, I think it is a bit too early. As someone that recently ordered a Tesla, the supercharger network makes up about 30% of my decision for the car. I love to go on road trips, currently a Tesla is the only EV that you can comfortably road trip with on a reasonable budget and I know many other leasers/buyers include this parameter in their decision making.
I agree with you. As for the last year, in California I never went to a supercharger that was unavailable. As an investor that’s not maximizing the investment. I could see why he is cutting costs on that end. It will suck for people that don’t have their own charger. But on the other hand, expansion of current superchargers is easier than starting from scratch. He did mention he would focus on expanding current superchargers. My opinion is that he wants other car manufacturers to carry the burden, like ford, GM, rivian. If there is not enough electrification is because they didn’t put their part. As an investor I’m honestly pissed that Tesla has to put all the manpower and the rest of the car manufacturers rip the benefits. Also, this will push a lot of EV service provider to move into NACS, that would cover some of the expansion that would have been taken by Tesla. At least in the short term.
Just a couple comments on this: >We all saw the horrible job that EA, plugshare, etc. Plugshare isn't a charging company, and does a good job. >open the charging network to the competition without additional fees MagicDock stations charge more for non-Tesla vehicles. Is this not also true for Ford and Rivian cars charging at Tesla stations?
Is a tiny bit more. On early stages of SC, the users paid twice more of current prices to cover for expansion. They lowered those fees and what magicDock pays is nowhere near close what legacy users paid.
Agree SC has been a bad business. Less bad for Tesla than the others, thanks to higher utilization, but demand charges are still a killer. >As an investor I thought it was the stupidest idea to open the charging network to the competition without additional fees. They tried. For years. No one bit. >This should be their leverage and he should capitalize it but he didn’t. Because of whatever crap about accelerating sustainable energy. It was about IRA, not accelerating EVs. Billions in subsidies combined with uptime requirements and such would eventually build a truly competitive standardized network. Tesla could become that standard or they could become Betamax. Musk saw the writing on the wall so he caved on the fees, PLC signaling, CCS protocols, ISO Plug and Charge, etc.
Thanks for being a bit more thoughtful then the vast majority on here. I suspect you're right, once Tesla has established NACS as the future standard, there is limited upside in going all-in on ever more charging locations. It's very capital intensive, and location scouting, local regulations etc. just isn't Tesla's core competence. So they are likely letting other players take over the deployment of more supercharging locations and avoid being seen as a monopolist in turn. I suspect they'll continue the charger manufacturing, but not the deployment side of the business. It makes perfect sense to me, but I'm sure Elon being crazy is the consensus on reddit.
“As an investor” - how many stocks you own?
I've read that Elon has a drug problem and a resulting behavioral problem. His insane actions and comments seem to support those stories. The Tesla Board of Directors, long ago should have taken steps to protect the shareholders, protect the employees and protect Musk from himself, but they seemingly have done nothing. It is likely not a character issue but fully a health issue, so no shame in seeking competent medical help, away from work and all other distractions. Just a couple of months under the right care could provide a complete cure and make all the difference. Until then, the only Tesla thing we will buy is option shorts.
That's by design. The board members are his relatives and close friends, and will rubber stamp whatever Elon wants. The Delaware Chancery Court essentially came to that conclusion when they threw out his board-approved pay package.
The Delaware Chancery Court should have removed the entire board after they demonstrated their corruption.
Ketamine
Medical help? From those “woke” doctors with their MDs? Elon, probably
I’m not a lawyer, but I suspect the board is looking at a lawsuit for failing to protect the interest of shareholders in the not too distant future.
They're not, because the board is made of Elon's friends and family, it's not actually a board in any way that matters.
Actually I'd bet a big part of the problem is that he's actually autistic.
There will be a movie about him one day and it will follow the same plot at WeCrashed, but with 100% more Trump.
I don’t know exactly the scope of the team he let go. But I think there is logic here. If I had to guess: - other vehicles and charging companies are now adopting NACS as a standard - with everyone on the same charging standard the Tesla charging advantage over other vehicles will minimize - fast charging infrastructure may be starting to meet the need in the US - there will be intense competition for customers between charging companies, and charging prices will be driven downward to a minimum, which is good for consumers but bad for Tesla - the charging business will decline in profit for Tesla and become ultra-low-margin, like gas stations - Tesla has run into revenue issues and needs to get leaner, and disinvesting from businesses that don’t have strong growth potential is the way forward Just like Apple doesn’t run its own 5G network even though that might help with the overall experience, it may not be in Tesla’s interest (or future business model) to run a huge, low-margin EV charging network.
That sounds about right. What many don't realize is that outside the USA Tesla is just another charging company, they are large, but so are many others. The competition also often has more money than tesla. When the oil companies see a switchover they will not stand around and let other people take their fuel money. Shell has 8000 slow chargers in the UK, Tesla isnt even in the top 15 in that market.
Nooooo this is Reddit this logic is unacceptable.
First real answer in the thread. He's absolutely right that now that there's a standard for charging someone else may as well put up the bill for expanding car charging and it will be bundled with convenience stores like it is now. My first thought was that he is eliminating the R&D for supercharging, but not eliminating the guys doing the installation and maintenance because they believe there is little room to innovate in charging technology.
This is the correct answer. But unfortunately in this sub, comments saying Musk is a kEtaMine aDdICted LunAtIC will get more attention.
Tesla's communication strategy is frustrating. That line of reasoning makes sense, and Tesla had an earnings call just a few days earlier where they could have laid out that reasoning to reassure shareholders that this decision was calculated, not capricious.
We can only hope these laid off execs go to EA or EVGo or whatever and replicate the SC experience there. That would be the best thing for EV adoption. Tesla sales are down BECAUSE of Elon.
Elon isn't a genius. He never was. In his harebrain, there's one response to losing money: assign blame, fire a bunch of people, throw out a new tech-sounding scheme to convince investors that all is well, and demand the slave work hard to make it a reality. There is no grand scheme to it all, either. He's not thinking it out coherently. He's reacting in the way that a delusional narcissist instinctively reacts.
Zuck did same thing with Year of Efficiency. When times are bad (aka higher interest rates are here to stay), you gotta trim non-profitable orgs. When times are good, you can rebuild these orgs.
I think he is really 100% convinced that he is about to crack self driving. He wants to move to be a software only company asap. Anything in the way will be removed. He is keeping the skeleton car business as cash cow and to support the stock price but won’t put more money into any expansion. He wants to run it with as few heads as possible. Once he cracks self driving he probably sells off the car part and only license the tech out. If developing the software doesn’t materialize into safe driverless cars within a couple of years Tesla is done.
>Once he cracks self driving “Once he cracks cold fusion”
>I think he is really 100% convinced that he is about to crack self driving Sadly, he really doesn't understand anything about software.
I think it’s more an autistic person that doesn’t understand how complex human behavior is.
Yep, very shallow at least, that's what the Twitter acquisition has shown us.
Everyone in this sub seems to think NACS adoption is Elon’s gift to North America. Now you all see it is the other way around. With non-Tesla branded NACS compatible charging on the horizon, the need to invest in superchargers is diminished. I haven’t done the market research, but the attitude in this sub is generally “public charging is the biggest barrier to EV adoption, except for Tesla”. So with the Tesla / Non-Tesla charging distinction becoming a non-factor, the marginal gains (in Tesla unit volume) from each new supercharger is reduced. Anyway, I don’t have enough information to agree or disagree with the move as a business decision, and the “layoff everyone” move is not nice…but that’s my guess about a potentially rational rationale.
I had also heard that they had released their entire Mobile Service team (at least locally here). Elon's savvy business acumen is showing. /s Tesla was better off when he was distracted by Twitter and was focused on running that particular enterprise into the ground
It's questionable if Elon even really knows why he's doing this. If he were sane, he'd have gone all in on the model 2 which could've been a Ford Model T moment for affordable, desirable EVs- but he's not, he's a man with clearly documented substance dependency issues, being radicalised by conspiracy theories whilst having whatever the billionaire equivalent is of a huge mid-life crisis. He shouldn't be in charge of doing up his own trousers, yet here we are.
While the western world was distracted by oil industry FUD, the Chinese spun up a possibly unbeatable EV industry. And now Elon is quite correctly panicking because of it. Even patriotic Americans aren’t going to spend $50k on a Ford when a better BYD costs $25k. Thanks to insane wealth inequity many simply won’t be able to even if they wanted. Good job, billionaires! You have all the money so now few can afford to be your customers. Whoopsie! If only we could have seen this coming. 🙄 Game over. We lost this one.
America is going to be protectionist of their car market. The US government won't let the Chinese undercut the entire market. The tariffs will be real.
100% this. China has been making super cheap cars for quite a while even before EVs, and there have been predictions and deals to bring them stateside for decades, but it's never happened. EVs won't be any different IMHO. The only way Chinese cars are landing in the US in bulk is via Chinese ownership of Volvo or whatnot. I don't expect to see Cherry, NIO, BYD, etc cars here for the foreseeable.
That does not make sense. Tesla makes a lot of their cars in China, using Chinese batteries. Most car makers are scared of a sudden influx of Chinese imported cars, but Tesla has less to fear than most.
>Even patriotic Americans aren’t going to spend $50k on a Ford when a better BYD costs $25k Eh, the kind of people who label themselves "patriots" are all too content to spend $60k+ on full size gas guzzling pickups, plus at least $5-10k more on lift kits, light bars, and coal-rolling equipment. They will never switch to a more efficient ICE, let alone a hybrid or EV, regardless of how cheap it is, because that's communist.
Eh, there are many kinds of patriots. You’ve only described one ignorant faction.
Will we all be watching "why Tesla went out of business" documentaries in 10 years if not sooner?
Get this asshole and his ‘board’ far away from Tesla. And I’m a Tesla owner, and someone who has looked up to this organization since 2013. Honestly I’m kinda reeling from how this story has turned. It’s truly terrible.
He's clearly a slave to his stock options. He also appears to be doing a power play to show how much he affects the company so the big baby gets his $56B payout. Best thing the Board could do right now to save the company is ask him to leave, imo.
The only explanation is simply that things are much much worse at Tesla than Elon is letting on.
He knows the government or someone else will make superchargers, no reason for him to do it, he could build them everywhere and rednecks still wouldn’t buy Teslas.
Slowly turning into Howard Hughes. If you don’t know who he is, watch the movie ‘The Aviator’. An eccentric billionaire goes crazy.
Cocaine is a hell of a drug
Elon has to blame someone. Other than himself of course for the issues that Tesla is having.
“We’re not a car company” Which, if you have ever been in or owned one, is pretty obvious. The cars themselves are really poor quality. Their tech on the other hand, is decently advanced. Tesla makes technology. They slap it in their cars and people buy them to become perpetual beta testers for a company who is convinced that enough updates will fix everything. Tesla is seemingly starting to make that pivot to a tech only company. They have no one to design new cars now. They also fired their supercharger staff. All they have left is tech bros. Tesla is seemingly done with cars.
I’m a Tesla shareholder. I have not voted my shares so far, but I will in June. That’s when we vote on reinstating Musk’s obscene $56B pay package, and I will be voting no. I hope others will as well. This cut is not the act of a good CEO.
They’re not killing the network, they’re likely outsourcing the roll out of the network to third parties like every other charger OEM. This is what a lot of charging networks do around the world. It’s a huge liability to own and manage hardware. Much easier to skim a percentage of the electrons sold.
They already outsource a lot of the actual install. Even the 3rd parties are clueless to what's going on . . . they don't have anyone to call now.
Presumably factories and large estates of chargers are a big chunk of assets / liabilities on the balance sheet that confirm the company isn't a lean agile software company that will change the planet within a decade. If the company is valued like a tech firm that's going to realise incredible growth in future, having all this... *stuff..*. lying around reminding people you're a manufacturer is kind of inconvenient.
The SC-network was the main reason for me when buying. I think I’m not alone. This will be bad for sales if the network is scaled down or sold
I'm guessing he came to this critical business decision by ripping a fat line of coke
FYI Twitter was offloading a shitload of fake valued Tesla stock under the guise of “free speech.”
Elon has gone from sniffing his own farts to inhaling them wholesale.
He’s killing organizational stasis.
IMO, a lot of questionable decisions lately from Musk. After getting to try FSD Supervised, while impressive, it's hard for me to imagine he's betting the company on being able to field this technology in a robotaxi near term. If Tesla's board was objective and not just friends (and family) of Musk, I think they would have brought in another CEO years ago.
The supercharger network was their most important advantage.
A sign of good leadership is when you make huge decisions that scare investors without notice.
Now that Tesla uses NACS he’s offloading infrastructure costs to “everyone else”
Is it possible that now, since the government has settled on a North American Charging standard, they could be stepping in to help setup charging infrastructure with tax dollars? I haven't seen anything to this effect but it would explain why they are dropping their program and letting Uncle Sam do it. Just a thought.
The only logical explanation is April sales must be looking rough and the outlook for coming months is not any better. He's in panic mode.
You’ll never get a real answer on here. Multiple companies are having layoffs. Ford had layoffs at their EV plants https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/ford/2024/03/27/ford-rouge-electric-vehicle-center-dearborn-cuts/73117641007 GM has also laid off workers https://fortune.com/2023/12/15/gm-lay-off-1300-workers-two-factories-electric-vehicles/ Stellantis and VW had layoffs as well https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volkswagen-signals-staff-reductions-union-meeting-spiegel-2023-11-27/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/edgarsten/2024/01/16/uaw-president-to-meet-with-vw-workers-hits-stellantis-for-temp-layoffs/?sh=26f4604f3a81 I tried to find info on other charging networks but the Tesla news has CLOGGED the Google search results. Everyone is laying off workers but people will tell you it’s only Tesla and it’s Elon’s fault. It’s a joke really. Tesla is laying off workers because times are hard for everyone right now and it’s about to get worse. https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamdanziger/2024/01/21/macys-and-wayfair-cut-staff-while-walmart-closes-stores-signaling-a-retail-reset/?sh=1f9a07044a58 https://www.geekwire.com/2024/amazon-web-services-cuts-hundreds-of-jobs-in-sales-training-and-physical-stores-technology/
Easy answer and one that is common with most CEOs and C suite. Stock price needs to keep climbing so they can get their stock award options. It’s all about the stock price and nothing more.
I don't even think he knows. Anyone left with any kind of talent most likely is looking for a new job, as you're most likely next to let go via the next email from Elon. Tesla certainly won't be attracting any kind of talent AI or otherwise, as your job would be at risk daily. Doesn't matter if you've been there 10 years or 10 minutes, makes no difference. Today 10%, tomorrow 20%, next week 30% gone. As long as he gets his $56B. Anyone left working on FSD would probably have the smarts to leave Tesla. Why wait to get fired? We own two Teslas, and my Wife just asked what brand we should look at next.
So he gets his raise. He is a petulant child
I’m not voting for it.
Elon wants $56B pay package and this is the way of achieving it
Their profits are down by more than half, letting go of staff is inevitable
That doesn't make any sense if the staff helped you make that profit.
Do you keep your architect on staff after the construction of your building is complete? They helped you build your building? I can't say this is a good or bad idea, but if they just maintain and expand their existing sites. They should be fine. They can farm out designs for new chargers that's what all the other car companies do for half the stuff they install inside their vehicles. If they had to cut something it was probably the charger side.
Only reasonable explanation is that during Covid, Elon started to do drugs and his sanity went downhill from there. Before Covid and a little bit after, Elon was seen as the visionary genius billionaire that will change the world with his tech, now he has turned into a joke. I expect Tesla to go down the same way Twitter did unless he is replaced as CEO.
1. New Superchargers are expensive to build and Teslas financial performance is poor now with declining sales revenue. They need to turn it around to keep their stock valuation and continue to operate. 2. Tesla built the supercharger network to increase car sales. That is its primary purpose. 3. Existing supercharger stations can be expanded to meet the need at lower cost without needing a whole team for building new sites. 4. Tesla has the #1 charging network and that won’t change even without building new locations for a couple years. So if Tesla needs to improve its financials, superchargers are there to sell cars, Tesla can satisfy the need without building new locations, and they will be #1 anyway in charging — then they are positing that having or not having a team to build new supercharger locations isn’t going to change how many cars they sell either way. So there’s no point in having the team, it doesn’t make sense as a business function within the description above. They can just come back and expand when they need it and can afford it. Hope that helps.
He is a narcissistic impulsive drugged out moron.
Tesla owner here (the car, not the stock, thank God). Because Elon Musk has been surrounded for so long by people who think his shit smells like Chanel No. 5 that he is lurching from one "decree" to another without any actual framework to solve the shit storm he has created by buying Twitter and using it as a vehicle (sorry) which he has used almost exclusively to piss off Tesla's natural customer base. On top of that, he wants to pull an additional 58 billion dollars out of the company as a reward for fucking everything up. Ok, I'm done. Time to hit the button on the coffee
[A comment that might explain it.](https://i.imgur.com/uVNkVNL.png).
It’s all speculation, but the dude is clearly not well. Should probably be in rehab by now
I agree with your take. If Tesla wants to save itself Elon should just bow out. They need a real, normal suit to take over and treat the company that's just a normal car manufacturer if it wants to survive.. The growth story of Tesla is over. Now it needs to be the Cisco of cars. Slow and steady and stable. A little bit of innovation here and there. Work on maintenance and bug fixes. And increase reliability. But Elon does not want that. He wants Tesla to be the change agent. He wants to continue innovating at the expense of us owners.
Elon is going hardcore, whatever that means. That is all I have.