FSD and Robotaxis are basically Musk’s Steiner Attack at this point. He is so extremely fixated on them that he’s losing sight of everything else.
this_for_loona
I think at this point any thoughts of musk being a business genius or vast strategic thinker are out the window. As a fervent anti-musker, the Sc network was the only part of Tesla I consistently defended to any and all. Even if he succeeds with robotaxis, they still need chargers.
iNFECTED_pIE
Clearly Elon just wanted to stop GM cars from joining his network /s
Tyr1326
I guess that explains why Musk was willing to share the network – he was planning to abandon it anyway. Wonderful.
BowlerLongjumping877
This is kind of crazy. Most people (or a lot, anyways) say the charging network is the only reason they have a tesla vs the competition, which is partially why Elon got away with not building quality cars (they may be better now) and not caring one bit about customer service. Mess with the charging network and what is left?
Chicoutimi
I guess the questions now are how much of a hold does Tesla have on NACS and how does that hold up other automakers and other charging providers in moving towards it. Other automakers are definitely catching up in terms of making competitive products at this point, but the weak point for all of them in North America was the reliability of public DC fast chargers.
SuperDork_
Someone remove this toddler from his role.
LowBarometer
This is really, really bad news for EV adoption.
ITypeStupdThngsc84ju
Honestly, this is one of the most conventional MBA type moves that I’ve seen from the guy. He recognizes that he can make charging into other people’s problem without a major impact on current owner experience.
Most CEOs would have (and actually have) outsourced charging long ago.
I still think it is dumb, but I get the motivation. In three years, they wouldn’t be the dominant player that they are now anyway. He’s trying to anticipate that shift.
What isn’t visible is whether there are more useful top line growth moves in the pipeline.
AuleTheAstronaut
Roi might be low on SCs. Not to say they aren’t looking everywhere to cut costs/increase revenue. They are. But since NACS is established and other companies will put up charging networks they both don’t need to and each will become less profitable as others come online
thavi
As these things are already engineered and proven to work, I guess the only thing that perplexes me is they’re rolling back plans to create more charging stations, as mentioned in the article.
If they were doing this to cut off other EV manufacturers from using the SC network (no Magic Dock, no widespread NACS adoption), I could understand it–at least from a cutthroat business perspective. I really can’t see what the plans are down the line here. Holding their own customers hostage?
Don’t get me wrong, I think Elon is a cancerous tit, but I at least think that the teams he has bought/pulled together are effective. I’m gonna guess are a lot of angry executives at Tesla who are vocally very sick of him, and he’s letting those heads roll…9 family extermination style.
fusionsofwonder
They fired everybody yet still have plans?
SGEVR
I’m probably reading too much into his recent behaviour, but I feel like he’s behaving like he’s been backed into a corner. I wonder how close his entire house of cards might be to crumbling
>Tesla still plans to grow the Supercharger network, just at a slower pace for new locations and more focus on 100% uptime and expansion of existing locations
Any way you cut it, this is just mind-bogglingly stupid. How are you going to improve uptime and expand now that you fired the entire department?
And now that you have millions of new BEVs gaining access in the next year, you’re going to…slow expansion? And Supercharger uptime is already extremely good—99.95% [according to Tesla](https://www.tesla.com/en_ca/NACS). That equates to about 4 hours of downtime per year. Considering some downtime is inevitable owing to external factors, is eking out an extra hour or two of uptime annually really the big priority here?
I have no idea what Elon Musk is doing, but literally none of it is good.
feurie
“pulling back” from what to what? We don’t know what internal plans were and what plans are now.
ElGatoMeooooww
Lol, the Musk fans “he’s playing 4D chess, you’ll see!”
kenypowa
Yes, let’s freak out and pretend all SC will stop working tomorrow. Ahhhhh the sky is falling.
Or Tesla has a SC team built for 50% annual EV growth but the actual growth may be 15-20% for a few years due to the high interest rate as all EV sales have slowed or declined.
Elon has made it clear in the past that if you don’t hire some back after a layoff, the layoff doesn’t go deep enough. So now they laid off the whole team and now can identify which posts are essential in keep the ship running.
Sucks for the affected folks but layoff is a common and reoccuring theme especially in American companies. Hope those who lost their jobs can find a new one asap.
Actual-Carpenter-90
Seems like Elon needs money and fast, maybe he already spent his bonus.
MatchingTurret
Makes sense. Tesla isn’t a car maker anymore, but an AI focused autonomous driving tech company. Or so I have heard. Robots, too.
SuperHumanImpossible
This to me was literally the only thing that Tesla had that could keep them alive and Elon in his ultimate genius is pulling it back. Fucking brain dead. Seriously. The ONLY thing that made Tesla special was the charging network, period. Their cars are lack luster as fuck, but they seem nice because the charging network is everywhere! The maps that route you to the charging network are great. Licensing the charging network to their manufacturers would make them serious bank. At this point, they are going to try to hold it all to themselves to boost car sales, but what will inevitably happen here is the government will see that as antitrust (which it obviously is) and force their hand to open it up. Which means, for the next 2-3 years, them pulling this move is going to completely destroy them.
yankeedjw
Yikes. Just test drove a Model 3 and was getting ready to pull the trigger. Will likely still go forward with it, but this certainly makes me pause.
sorospaidmetosaythis
It would never occur to any of us to do this. Sheer managerial brilliance. An outside-the-box deep strategic move.
24 Comments
FSD and Robotaxis are basically Musk’s Steiner Attack at this point. He is so extremely fixated on them that he’s losing sight of everything else.
I think at this point any thoughts of musk being a business genius or vast strategic thinker are out the window. As a fervent anti-musker, the Sc network was the only part of Tesla I consistently defended to any and all. Even if he succeeds with robotaxis, they still need chargers.
Clearly Elon just wanted to stop GM cars from joining his network /s
I guess that explains why Musk was willing to share the network – he was planning to abandon it anyway. Wonderful.
This is kind of crazy. Most people (or a lot, anyways) say the charging network is the only reason they have a tesla vs the competition, which is partially why Elon got away with not building quality cars (they may be better now) and not caring one bit about customer service. Mess with the charging network and what is left?
I guess the questions now are how much of a hold does Tesla have on NACS and how does that hold up other automakers and other charging providers in moving towards it. Other automakers are definitely catching up in terms of making competitive products at this point, but the weak point for all of them in North America was the reliability of public DC fast chargers.
Someone remove this toddler from his role.
This is really, really bad news for EV adoption.
Honestly, this is one of the most conventional MBA type moves that I’ve seen from the guy. He recognizes that he can make charging into other people’s problem without a major impact on current owner experience.
Most CEOs would have (and actually have) outsourced charging long ago.
I still think it is dumb, but I get the motivation. In three years, they wouldn’t be the dominant player that they are now anyway. He’s trying to anticipate that shift.
What isn’t visible is whether there are more useful top line growth moves in the pipeline.
Roi might be low on SCs. Not to say they aren’t looking everywhere to cut costs/increase revenue. They are. But since NACS is established and other companies will put up charging networks they both don’t need to and each will become less profitable as others come online
As these things are already engineered and proven to work, I guess the only thing that perplexes me is they’re rolling back plans to create more charging stations, as mentioned in the article.
If they were doing this to cut off other EV manufacturers from using the SC network (no Magic Dock, no widespread NACS adoption), I could understand it–at least from a cutthroat business perspective. I really can’t see what the plans are down the line here. Holding their own customers hostage?
Don’t get me wrong, I think Elon is a cancerous tit, but I at least think that the teams he has bought/pulled together are effective. I’m gonna guess are a lot of angry executives at Tesla who are vocally very sick of him, and he’s letting those heads roll…9 family extermination style.
They fired everybody yet still have plans?
I’m probably reading too much into his recent behaviour, but I feel like he’s behaving like he’s been backed into a corner. I wonder how close his entire house of cards might be to crumbling
[Called it](https://www.reddit.com/r/electricvehicles/comments/1cgmcmt/comment/l1wpg9i/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3). :/
Maybe this isn’t fair. Assuming that Melon will always do the stupidest thing is a very safe bet.
This is like watching your favorite team trade away its best players for a draft pick, and getting absolutely nothing in return.
[Further comments from Elon on X](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1785406795814510785):
>Tesla still plans to grow the Supercharger network, just at a slower pace for new locations and more focus on 100% uptime and expansion of existing locations
Any way you cut it, this is just mind-bogglingly stupid. How are you going to improve uptime and expand now that you fired the entire department?
And now that you have millions of new BEVs gaining access in the next year, you’re going to…slow expansion? And Supercharger uptime is already extremely good—99.95% [according to Tesla](https://www.tesla.com/en_ca/NACS). That equates to about 4 hours of downtime per year. Considering some downtime is inevitable owing to external factors, is eking out an extra hour or two of uptime annually really the big priority here?
I have no idea what Elon Musk is doing, but literally none of it is good.
“pulling back” from what to what? We don’t know what internal plans were and what plans are now.
Lol, the Musk fans “he’s playing 4D chess, you’ll see!”
Yes, let’s freak out and pretend all SC will stop working tomorrow. Ahhhhh the sky is falling.
Or Tesla has a SC team built for 50% annual EV growth but the actual growth may be 15-20% for a few years due to the high interest rate as all EV sales have slowed or declined.
Elon has made it clear in the past that if you don’t hire some back after a layoff, the layoff doesn’t go deep enough. So now they laid off the whole team and now can identify which posts are essential in keep the ship running.
Sucks for the affected folks but layoff is a common and reoccuring theme especially in American companies. Hope those who lost their jobs can find a new one asap.
Seems like Elon needs money and fast, maybe he already spent his bonus.
Makes sense. Tesla isn’t a car maker anymore, but an AI focused autonomous driving tech company. Or so I have heard. Robots, too.
This to me was literally the only thing that Tesla had that could keep them alive and Elon in his ultimate genius is pulling it back. Fucking brain dead. Seriously. The ONLY thing that made Tesla special was the charging network, period. Their cars are lack luster as fuck, but they seem nice because the charging network is everywhere! The maps that route you to the charging network are great. Licensing the charging network to their manufacturers would make them serious bank. At this point, they are going to try to hold it all to themselves to boost car sales, but what will inevitably happen here is the government will see that as antitrust (which it obviously is) and force their hand to open it up. Which means, for the next 2-3 years, them pulling this move is going to completely destroy them.
Yikes. Just test drove a Model 3 and was getting ready to pull the trigger. Will likely still go forward with it, but this certainly makes me pause.
It would never occur to any of us to do this. Sheer managerial brilliance. An outside-the-box deep strategic move.
Write the man a check for $56B!