Elon Musk says Tesla will grow Supercharger network after layoffs

Elon Musk has promised that Tesla’s network of ultra-fast chargers will continue to expand — albeit more slowly — even after he axed the team behind the project.

All but a few members of the 500-worker team that developed Tesla’s Superchargers were laid off on Tuesday, including Rebecca Tinucci, a six-year veteran of the company overseeing the division. In an email to senior executives on Monday, Musk said he wanted to be “absolutely hardcore” about reducing headcount.

Musk added he will ask any executive “who retains more than three people who don’t obviously pass the excellent, necessary and trustworthy test” to resign on Tuesday morning. It’s unclear if any additional senior leaders have resigned besides Tinucci and and Daniel Ho, who had been at Tesla for more than 10 years and led its new products division until Tuesday.

Three other executives — including Drew Baglino, who led powertrain and energy engineering — have announced their resignations or plan to do so in the near-future. They join at least 14,000 other Tesla employees impacted by Tesla’s round of layoffs announced on April 15.

Tinucci has been instrumental in leading Tesla’s electric vehicle charging business and convincing every major Western automaker to adopt the North American Charging Standard(NACS). Those deals won Tesla praise from President Joe Biden and opened the door for federal subsidies to expand the reach of the NACS.

Several automakers that signed deals with Tesla, including Hyundai Motor Co. and Ford Motor Co., said their plans haven’t changed.

“Tesla still plans to grow the Supercharger network, just at a slower pace for new locations and more focus on 100% uptime and expansion of existing locations,” Musk wrote in a post on X on Tuesday. In response to a question from a user on the social media platform, he added that sites currently under construction will be finished and that Tesla “will add additional Superchargers anywhere where there are gaps.”

But Elecktrek reports that Tesla has backed out of four leases for upcoming Supercharger stations in New York City. The stations were announced earlier this year to address overcrowded Superchargers in Queens, the Bronx, and Brooklyn. The company had promised to deploy 100 additional chargers in the city by the end of the year, most of which would have been at those four stations.

Tesla stock was down almost 2% in pre-market trading Wednesday after falling more than 5% on Tuesday, shedding some of its gains after a self-driving win in China and Musk’s promises to investors last week. The stock is down more than 26% year-to-date.