The dissolution of the Supercharger team shook the electric car world and the US government

If Tesla boss Elon Musk is good at anything, it’s keeping the attention of the world’s media. For the third day now, they have been writing about how unexpected and controversial the dismissal of around 500 people was, including the director of the Supercharger team, incidentally one of the highest-ranking women in the entire company, and they successfully make people forget the recent news about the car company’s very poor financial results for the first quarter of this year. For example, Bloomberg writes that the unexpected decision, connected with Musk’s announcement to slow down the development of the Supercharger network, has shaken the position of US President Biden himself, who built a large part of his program on the rapid promotion of electric mobility and the generous system of indirect subsidies IRA for 7.5 billion dollars (175 billion crowns). Last February, he expressed public support for Musk’s efforts to expand Superchargers on social networks, but today new news is complicating his ongoing election campaign. And they record Trump, who is a big opponent of electromobility. Biden will now find it difficult to fulfill his promise to build half a million charging networks in the US.

So now the complete opening of Superchargers to third parties, which is still far from complete, is in jeopardy. Embarrassment is also spreading among American automakers, whose hopes of fulfilling plans associated with the transition to Tesla’s NACS charging standard have vanished. They, in turn, now have to explain to their customers, who only a few months ago were pleased with the promise of the possibility of using Superchargers, that the promised further rapid growth will not take place. Most of them do not yet intend to change their still physically unrealized decision, but this attitude can change at any time.

Replacements are quickly piling up to replace Tesla, which appears to be voluntarily vacating the clear first place in building a charging network in the US. During Biden’s tenure alone, more than 40 charging infrastructure companies announced significant investments in building manufacturing capacity. But the problem is that, at least initially, new charging stations will be much more expensive to build than Tesla, which can purchase the necessary hardware 20 to 70% cheaper than the competition thanks to volume discounts, and to reduce the cost per kilowatt-hour sold within a few years by systematically improving efficiency up to 40%. Also thanks to this, the Supercharger network is the only one profitable and, unlike the complete competition, it can earn even without subsidies.

Musk responded to this with a statement according to which he will slow down the construction of new Superchargers, but at the same time he will focus on increasing the quality of the existing ones. It was only in response to a discussion on the X network that he finally admitted that he would complete the charging stations under construction and finish plugging the gaps in the existing network. It’s just not entirely clear at this point how he wants to do it.