Tesla is not going through its best financial times. The presentation of results for the first quarter of 2024 came with alarming data, with drops in income and unit sales. All in all, Elon Musk’s promises convinced investors, who once again raised the share Price.
But the real bad news had arrived just a few days before the presentation of results. A snip to the squad that, at first, was in the 10% of the workforce all over the world but Bloomberg He already assures that the company’s intention is to increase the number of layoffs to 20% of the company.
Little by little, the casualties have become known until there are more than 14,000 layoffs. From senior positions to rank-and-file workers in their gigafactories. One of the most affected teams has been its supercharger network, which has directly disappeared, leaving behind 500 former workers. A few days later it was rumored that the company could hire them again.
A sign of identity at risk
The decision to fire the entire team in charge of the company’s supercharger strategy has been as controversial as it has been little applauded by users.
At the end of April, Elon Musk assured that what the company wanted was to change the strategy in the supercharger network. The path, it seems, is a slower implementation of this charging network and, in return, focus more on ensuring that its sockets are occupied for longer or the available spaces are expanded in the stations already installed.
This strategy is not shared by many users. As we can read above, superchargers had become a hallmark of the company. It is one of the reasons that allowed it to grow faster than anyone else in the electric car market and continues to be, at least in Spain, an added value compared to the competition.
The company has been exploring ways to get more performance out of its plugs for some time. It has been playing for some time with its opening to third-party vehicles, balancing between creating a new business avenue and continue to keep happy customers who see in this network a seal of distinction and an incentive to purchase a company vehicle.
The move, former Tesla employees warn, will directly affect the user experience. “In my opinion, quality is going to deteriorate. Customers are going to start seeing that problems last longer than they are used to,” a former employee of the company told InsideEVs.
In the stories collected in the American media, the responses refer, especially, to the maintenance of the chargers. According to the company’s current workers, remote repairs to the superchargers were already overloading the workforce. With mass layoffs, this will negatively affect the impression that consumers had until now.
“I was practically available all day. I had to be on the phone all the time. I sacrificed a lot of family time,” explains one of the laid-off workers to underline the shortage of workers that the company currently has in its maintenance area. .
In other testimonies, the workers seemed surprised by the decision, now that Tesla had opened its sockets to rivals and was getting a good part of the competition to adopt its charging system. Being able to count on the Tesla network in the United States meant that some buyers would take the step, even if it was with the competition, to the electric car.
Therefore, in testimonies to InsideEVs and media like The New York Times, the workers could not get out of their astonishment. Elon Musk, however, is clear about the strategy: “we need to be extremely tough with reducing staff and costs.” This is what was read in the letter addressed to his executives announcing his intentions for the nearest future, according to The Information.
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