Musk “chopped” the team at Superchargers. The development of the charging network is uncertain

Tesla boss Elon Musk launched another shock therapy this week when he announced that he would be disbanding the entire Supercharger Group team, including CEO Rebecca Tinucci. As Road and Track magazine also wrote, there are about 500 people in total.

According to the CNN server, the move, prompted by Musk’s effort to save money, has unsettled the American industry, which has the task of building a new American network of chargers for electric cars. A fast and reliable charging network is an essential component for drivers to switch from gas-powered vehicles to electricity.

The plan for a rapid transition to electricity was also supported by US President Joe Biden, who set the goal of installing half a million stations in the US by the end of the decade and set aside $7.5 billion (175 billion crowns) for network development in the system of indirect subsidies. Musk’s decision will thus complicate the ongoing election campaign for the US president and hurt Donald Trump, who is a big opponent of electromobility.

Tesla received more money from federal charging station contracts than any other company (about 14% of the total valuation), according to CNN, and now it’s unclear whether it will be able to complete the contracted work or whether the contracts will eventually go to other companies.

Musk’s decision is incomprehensible to the public and experts.

Until recently, Tesla played a central role in the development of charging stations. Many EV experts and drivers are convinced that Tesla’s chargers are well-placed, fast and reliable, so much so that other car companies are adapting their charging plugs to fit Tesla’s system. At the same time, most car companies operating in North America are switching to the NACS charging standard developed and developed by Tesla.

According to the fDrive server, by firing the entire team, Musk made the entire electric car community uncertain, which now does not know how to proceed with the development of the network it relied on. After criticism of his move on the X platform (formerly Twitter), Musk stated that Tesla will continue to build Superchargers, but only more slowly.

A spokesman for the Joint Energy and Transportation Administration, which runs the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, told CNN that 10 US states have chosen Tesla as a provider of charging projects. At present, it is not clear whether Tesla will see them through to the end, since the operators of these programs are specific states, but it should not have a fatal impact.

“Given that NEVI provides grants to states that conduct tenders for suppliers of individual programs, we do not expect that the decision of one particular company will affect the development of other projects,” the spokesperson said.

Other people in the industry said that the possible loss of Tesla would not be a big blow to the development of electromobility. “There are many, many charging companies,” an electric vehicle industry source told CNN. “It’s not like the money is going to Tesla or anywhere. The only thing that will change now is who gets these rewards,” he added.

The belief that, despite the dispersal of the Tesla team, competing companies can continue to develop electromobility is strengthened by the fact that there are now dozens of top experts on the free labor market, whom the competition is eager to reach for.

“In the end, it’s probably going to be a plus for the entire market because it’s not in the public interest for one company to be so dominant,” Daniel Sperling, founding director of the Institute for Transportation Studies at the University of California Davis, told CNN. “The good news is that this will motivate all these charging companies, as well as the car manufacturers, to double down on their investment in creating a reliable widespread charging system.”

And the fact that there are many more players in the electric car charging field may have been one of the things that caused Musk to pull back significantly from the field, electric car industry analyst Loren McDonald told the US site. “Tesla can slow down a bit, be a lot more strategic and finally shift some of the investment and responsibility onto the shoulders of others,” McDonald added.