Why did the Supercharger team have to leave?

For North America, the Supercharger network is much larger than for Europe. It is something of a symbol of electromobility itself, as it was the first to market by a wide margin, covering almost the entire United States and to this day it is expanding faster than all competing charging networks combined. Quite rightly, Tesla’s NACS charging connector has become the new standard there for other manufacturers as well, in addition, Teslas are to Americans a bit like Skodas to us; an American product that conquers the world. And Superchargers also belong to this world, of course, but from the beginning they were one of the main arguments for switching to Tesla, which is somewhat synonymous with switching to electromobility in those regions.

The train is off to a great start; Superchargers are already around 58,000 and their network has set the standards for the competition. And in the first quarter alone, the company installed a record 3,680 chargers. But this number belongs to the old days, which ended unexpectedly and overnight last week. Elon Musk fired practically the entire 500-strong team, including the director, and announced that he would slow down the construction of new chargers. In a situation where Tesla operates 74% of all ultra-fast racks in the US, this is far from enough. According to Bloomberg, there must be no less than 400,000 ultra-fast chargers in North America by 2030 to be able to serve the 40 million electric cars that should be driving in the region by then. And it will be far from the last great challenge; five years later there should be 90 million electric cars.

In Europe the situation is quite different; there is an order of magnitude more competition, and roughly 390 companies are building 11x faster than Tesla alone. This is also a nice result for an American company, but it is far from market dominance. In addition, the coverage of Europe’s Superchargers is highly uneven and, unfortunately, this is unlikely to change much. We are getting to the first of the possible reasons why Elon Musk actually took this controversial step. Fighting for every inch of market space is not nearly as interesting or profitable as coming in first and dominating the market, as Superchargers have done in the US and Canada. And since 50 new competitors have entered the American charging market since the launch of the NEVI (National Electric Vehicle Infrastucture) government support program, apparently Musk is no longer interested in this field.

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Another question mark is profitability. Superchargers do make money, but it’s not a staggering amount, and it’s certainly not the norm in the industry; on the contrary, the vast majority of competing charging networks currently generate chronic losses. Still, the plan is for a 10% profit margin, and the network could generate $740 million in revenue by 2030, roughly 8% of the company’s total. But this is opposed by the issue of increasing service and, above all, modernization costs. Superchargers are gradually opening up to other brands, but only the latest V4 Superchargers, of which there are only about 7% in the network, can fully serve the increasingly widespread electric cars with 800V architecture. In addition, cables will have to be extended; the existing ones are precisely calculated to reach the tesla connector, which is always on the left rear, but they are short for most other electric cars.

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And perhaps the very fact that the set goal is moving away, or has completely failed, could have been another reason for the radical cut. In addition, the slowdown in the construction of new stations will increase the utilization of the existing ones, and a reevaluation of the current, very favorable price policy, aimed at undermining the competition, is also expected. So business does not end for the company, but it will take on a slightly different role in the future. Either way, Musk is clearly leaning toward new projects. This year alone, according to his reports on the X network (which cannot always be taken 100% seriously), Musk wants to invest 10 billion dollars (23.2 billion crowns) in improving artificial intelligence. Just for the sake of interest, the amount of the estimated capital costs (capex) of the entire Tesla for this year is only slightly higher. It’s probably a chance to be first somewhere again and dominate the market.

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North Americans were left to their own devices anyway. Musk’s decision further worsened the negative sentiment towards electric cars, which prevails among a large part of the company, a big problem is also faced by practically all major car companies there, which announced the transition to the NACS standard. Some time ago, seven of them announced the establishment of the Ionnna joint venture, which is to build at least 30,000 chargers with a premium level of service, i.e. a kind of European Ionita. He should start quickly, the market will urgently need them in the near future. Hopes are placed in the mentioned 50 startups, but they lack know-how, volume discounts and prominent locations, i.e. everything that Tesla dominated the market with its Superchargers.