This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
This is a death sentence for Tesla. I have a Model 3 that I enjoy despite its shortcomings. One of the deciding factors was the supercharger network. It's the easiest system I've used for charging. It makes all other networks infuriating in comparison.
A lot of people get Teslas for the ease of charging alone. If the network starts to falter, people will leave the brand even faster than they already are.
Tesla really needs to vote this idiot out of the CEO position before he kills the company.
Not to mention the charging infrastructure is one of the reasons some people haven't made the switch yet. Anything holding back charging expansion is a disaster in my view.
US needs to regulate chargers.
Yes, yes, market and all. But look at printers. Or charger cables for small electronic devices (EU stepped in). Lock-in of customers is an incentive working against common chargers.
US needs to regulate chargers.
100%. This should have been addressed years ago, honestly. No one would tolerate VW only being able to gas up at Shell stations due to different nozzles. This is no different.
US needs to regulate chargers.
Assuming it isn't strangled in the cradle by Red State infrastructure haters (like the HSR projects through the Midwest that Obama failed to implement), this could be a good thing.
But I've seen so many of these kinds of plans get a ton of money and produce vanishingly little in the way of material change. So we'll see where it all goes.
Tesla really needs to vote this idiot out of the CEO position before he kills the company.
That was last year. It's too late now.
They can't because the Musk personality cult is pretty much the only thing keeping the company viable at this point. They are absolutely fucked.
I'm their prime demographic, currently car shopping to replace my wrecked Benz, and was leaning towards a Model 3 up until reading this headline lol. I guess I could still charge at home or if the network fails it could be purchased by another company?
Or I just avoid stressing about it altogether and get a normal car
Down in flames it is then.
Musk also told staff that he would ask for the resignation of any executive "who retains more than three people who don't obviously pass the excellent, necessary and trustworthy test."
Pssst. Elon. You're not any of those three things.
Shouldn't he resign based on this criterion?
No, just the executive who's retaining him, obviously
Which... I guess that means the board?
Is this clown trying to tank the company because he didn't get his payout?
I think he's trying to tank the company because he sees Sundar doing the same shit at Google and assumes it will lead to a big payout.
I've said before that the supercharger network is their most important long term asset. They opened up their plug standard, other manufacturers are jumping on board, and they have the largest network that supports all those new EVs.
Only problem is that it's boring, and Elon doesn't like boring. So now here we are.
What really baffles me is why he totally ghosted his battery swap station idea. That completely solves the range and charging time issue all in one fell swoop. Demonstrated it on stage even. Guessing it either wasn’t profitable enough for him, not s3xy enough, or he wasn’t smart enough to figure out how to scale it up.
He announced it as part of a tax break scam, then let the project die.
There's been some discussion over the years that Tesla never seriously tried to make the battery swap work, that they did it to claim subsidies from California which they subsequently never returned to the taxpayers.
And herein lies the danger of Billionaires. Who stops them when they want to impose their tyrannical agendas on the vulnerable. Who prevents him from buying an atomic weapon and setting it off for a meme stunt or internet points ?
If only us lowly workers had more rights.
What’s Tesla’s USP to an investor now? The supercharger ‘lock in’ and early head start at the EV game are Tesla’s biggest boons, but the former appears to have been gutted and the latter has been squandered on a slow model release schedule
If the Tesla Board had any responsibilities at all, it was to prevent this by ejecting Elmo. They chose to not.
It is now time to stick a fork in it. Billionaires - Away!
But definitely make sure to approve that $53 billion pay package, cuz musk is cleaaaarly doing such an amazing job!
Time to short the stock then, if they are not gonna invest in their own future.
Layoffs tend to precipitate big stock price jumps in my experience. Investors love job losses
All of which makes the decision to get rid of senior director of EV charging Rebecca Tinucci—along with her entire team—a bit of a head-scratcher. . . . Musk told workers that Tesla "will continue to build out some new Supercharger locations, where critical, and finish those currently under construction."
Many Tesla fans had been holding out hope that Musk would debut a cheap Model 2 EV in recent weeks. Instead, the tycoon promised that robotaxis would save the business . . .
Delivering on that goal is more than just a technical challenge, and it will require the cooperation and approval of state and federal authorities. However, Musk is also dissolving the company's public policy team in this latest cull.
Yeah that's the ballgame.
He realised electric cars are popular with libs so in a masterful gambit is destroying his company to own them.
Musk also told staff that he would ask for the resignation of any executive "who retains more than three people who don't obviously pass the excellent, necessary and trustworthy test."
What a complete fuckup of a human. Sad to see so many trusted him. I guess we don't have direct evidence of him being a serial killer at least.
Musk has been reading about all the layoffs happening at other companies who are now floundering due to the loss of institutional competence and memory, and goes "we need some of that shiat STAT!"
Anyone really shocked? Everything he owns is the greatest thing on earth until it isnt. Then he tries to sink it further
That's one way to stop a union.
When you have a narcissistic sociopath for a boss don't expect job security. All these layoffs and his insane letter will do is cultivate toadying, fear, distrust, cliques and a culture of backstabbing within Tesla.
huh
I wonder what's the probability that the current EV makers might unite to create an open source standard alternative now that this has happened?
There are already 2 of them.
NACS, which is essentially the Tesla charger, was made available to other car manufacturers at no cost already, in 2022. Due to a few reasons, among them the existence of Tesla superchargers already deployed, a lot of companies have adopted this as their charger for newer cars.
Even if Tesla went down completely, their charger is already open, so nah I don't expect any changes based on this.
If they go down... Will the vehicles even work after that? Can they drive offline? Or will Muskrat shut down everything, even the vehicles?
Killed the Golden Goose moment
He either didn't get his pay package so he is burning the whole place down, or he has really lost his mind.
Outwardly this looks like steering the boat toward the waterfall. I'm guessing this is predicating another move by Musk to "prove" to the stock market that Tesla is an AI company that happens to make cars, rather than a car company that has potential AI products. And (if so) it probably ties into that remark he made about using idle Teslas as compute resources.
Ready made team about to take over the EV charging market.
I mean, with their non-competes getting voided by the FTC, you’re not wrong. All of the building blocks are there for a new startup. They’d just need a few investors (who will keep their mitts off of the inner workings, unlike Elon,) willing to foot the bill.
yeah thats what you get for allowing a corpo to build a proprietary, closed charging ecosystem.
