Tesla begins rebuilding Supercharger team
As Bloomberg writes, citing insiders, Max de Zegher is one of the recently dismissed employees who are now apparently being rehired under new conditions. De Zegher is considered a top manager in the charging infrastructure sector and was responsible for Tesla’s charging business in North America before his dismissal. According to Bloomberg, it is not yet known how many other sacked employees could return.
CEO Elon Musk recently stated that his company will invest more than 500 million US dollars in the expansion of its charging network this year. However, it is unclear with which personnel. After all, the Tesla CEO recently dissolved the responsible department. However, on his X platform (formerly Twitter), Musk recently stated verbatim: “Just to reiterate, Tesla will be spending well over $500 million this year to expand the Supercharger network to create thousands of NEW charging stations. That’s just for new locations and expansions, not including operating costs, which are much higher.”
The background to this is that at the end of April – following the previous redundancies of around ten per cent of Tesla employees – there were increasing indications that the Texan electric car manufacturer was further downsizing its workforce. The portal “The Information” wrote that this time it would affect the Supercharger division, among others, citing an internal email from Tesla CEO Elon Musk to senior employees. The rumours were later confirmed that Rebecca Tinucci, Senior Director of the Supercharger business, had been dismissed – along with the majority of her team – or even all employees. This is where it becomes imprecise.
However, it is reported that Musk commented on this step in the internal email with the following statement: “Hopefully these actions make it clear that we need to be absolutely tough on headcount and cost reduction. While some executives are taking this seriously, most are not yet.”
According to a social media post by Musk at the beginning of May, the expansion is continuing at a slower pace and existing locations are to be given greater focus. Recently, however, he added a new twist, stating that “thousands” of new charging stations are to be created this year after all. It has so far been completely unclear who is to coordinate this. However, there were rumours early on that some of those made redundant could be rehired. However, this is unlikely to be the case for Rebecca Tinucci, most recently Senior Director of the Supercharger business. Until last week, she listed her position on LinkedIn as “Sr Director of EV Charging at Tesla”. However, she confirmed her resignation there a few days ago.
Meanwhile, there is a “sign of life” from the Supercharger division on Platform X. After a long period of silence, the following post was published on 10 May: “Since 2012, charging has been a pillar of Tesla’s mission to provide reliable freedom of travel. Supercharging is the largest network in the world, with the highest capital and operational efficiencies, and we will continue to support and grow the network. We thank operators and suppliers for their patience while we reorganise internally!”
It has been known for a few weeks that things are bubbling under the Tesla umbrella. The company presented declining sales and business figures for the first quarter. Shortly before this, it was announced that Tesla was making more than 14,000 employees redundant at short notice, including entire teams working on “critical projects”. At the same time, several top managers resigned. Tesla’s Head of Engineering Drew Baglino confirmed his resignation via a social media post, as did the aforementioned former Head of Policy Rohan Patel. According to the Electrek portal, Anthony Thurston, Senior Manager of Cathode Materials & Manufacturing, also had to leave.
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