May 15 (Reuters) - The day before Elon Musk fired virtually all of Tesla’s electric-vehicle charging division last month, they had high hopes as charging chief Rebecca Tinucci went to meet with Musk about the network’s future, four former charging-network staffers told Reuters.
After Tinucci had cut between 15% and 20% of staffers two weeks earlier, part of much wider layoffs, they believed Musk would affirm plans for a massive charging-network expansion.
The meeting could not have gone worse. Musk, the employees said, was not pleased with Tinucci’s presentation and wanted more layoffs. When she balked, saying deeper cuts would undermine charging-business fundamentals, he responded by firing her and her entire 500-member team.
There are currently billions in subsidies offsetting the costs of constructing more chargers, which will bring in continuous revenue long after the construction is paid off. Continuous revenue being that thing that so many other Tesla projects are not bringing in. And the number of vehicles paying to use these chargers is about to go up as most other manufacturers recently agreed to change their standard and rely on Tesla’s charging infrastructure. And with range anxiety and the perceived lack of charging infrastructure being consistently cited as one of the main things holding people back from switching to EVs, future growth depends on increasing the availability of charging. Plus, with Tesla pushing its app on everyone who wants to use their charging network, I’m sure there’s plenty of data being gathered and sold, making it that much more valuable for them to maintain a near monopoly.
Plus, they have spent years developing a skilled team of experienced employees that know what they are doing and have relationships with all the various vendors, regulators and external stakeholders that need to be dealt with to get things done. And with the non-compete clauses Tesla likes to use having been struck down in court, and Tesla’s charging standard being released as an open standard rather than a proprietary one, anyone they lose can take all that expertise to a competitor. Like, maybe one of those other manufacturers that wants to switch to NACS, and might just want some of those subsidies to pay for chargers that will bring in long term revenue.
I mean, you’d have to be some kind of moron to fuck that up. You’d have to be the king of all morons to fuck that up over your own ego. Especially since the dispute is over how many employees with critical functions you want laid off, while at the same time you are spending money on an ad campaign to convince shareholders to approve a compensation package that costs more than all those laid off employees would have cost over the next decade or two.
My favorite comment in response to Tesla’s terrible decisions: “Man, it’s like their CEO’s on drugs or something”
Golden Goose: [Dutifully laying eggs.]
Musk: [Sharpens axe]
Elon is one of the dumbest and most fragile clowns on the planet. I don’t know what I’d do with billions of dollars but it would not include making sock puppet accounts to tell everyone how cool I am.