Tesla Supercharger Shock – Will the EV Charging Industry Seize the Moment?
By Edward A. Sanchez — May 2, 2024
On the heels of Tesla’s massive layoffs following disappointing Q1 2024 results comes news that effectively the entire Supercharger team, including Rebecca Tinucci, were let go. Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded that projects already underway would be completed, and that going forward, focus would be on improving uptime and expanding existing locations.
While this announcement left many shocked and confounded in the industry, it also presents a prime opportunity for the rest of the EV charging network industry to step up and take advantage of the situation. Now that the “Tesla” plug is now standardized by the SAE J3400 standard, the specs are no longer proprietary.
Up to this point, Tesla was the most aggressive in building out its network, and had perfected a modular installation system that significantly expedited charging station installation. When some competitors barely had a shovel in the ground, some nearby Supercharger stations were already up and running.
The engineering and design of the charging points were also massively simplified compared to many others, lowering costs. There are now rumors that some dismissed members of the Supercharger team may be hired back to manage projects already in the pipeline, and maintain relationships with OEM partners that have adopted NACS, and want native access to the Supercharger network.
But if that doesn’t happen, the collective knowledge of the Supercharger team would be a huge boon to any of the third-party charging network operators. The challenge of bringing them on board would likely be cultural. Tesla is famous (or notorious) for a flat organizational structure, with different teams and divisions collaborating to expedite projects and maximize efficiencies. Organizations that are highly siloed and hierarchical may not lend themselves well to outsiders coming in and taking sledgehammers to those sacrosanct silos.
But companies that are open to it could get a treasure trove of technical and institutional knowledge, an innovative, entrepreneurial approach to problem solving, and an edge over their competitors. The likelihood that a single company will get all of the Supercharger team is unlikely. More probable is that the team will disperse throughout the industry in various roles and capacities. That’s not altogether a negative scenario either.
The charging network industry up until this point has rightly or wrongly earned the reputation of being slow moving, lacking innovation or imagination, and not taking network maintenance and uptime seriously. This is the opportunity for the industry to step up and show their agility, responsiveness, and strategic acumen.
In whichever form it takes, the U.S. and the world are in need of a widespread, reliable, easy-to-use, and affordable charging ecosystem. Even with these dramatic cuts, Tesla could still maintain the lead for years to come. But with the democratization of NACS, and now hundreds of specialists with insider knowledge on the job market, now is the chance for the industry to seize the opportunity to create transformative change in the EV charging network industry.
