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More than a week after Tesla laid off the majority of its Supercharger division, CEO Elon Musk now says the company will spend upwards of half a billion dollars on expanding the network.
“Just to reiterate: Tesla will spend well over $500 [million] expanding our Supercharger network to create thousands of NEW chargers this year,” Musk wrote in a late-night post on X, the social media platform he owns, on Thursday. He clarified that his estimate includes only money spent on new sites and expansions.
Storm clouds for Superchargers
Musk has previously said the Supercharger network will continue expanding, albeit at a slower pace for new locations and a greater focus on bolstering existing sites. He has also said that charging sites currently being worked on will be finished and that Tesla “will add additional Superchargers anywhere where there are gaps.”
The effective shutdown of Tesla’s Supercharger division — which has helped greatly expand the Austin, Texas-based automaker’s network of ultra-fast chargers for electric vehicles — stunned outside observers. The company delivered about 8% of the public charging capacity demanded across the world last year and was on track to capture $7.4 billion of the worldwide $127 billion EV charging industry by 2070, according to BloombergNEF.
But that was before the company laid off most of the 500-worker division and its head, Rebecca Tinucci in late April. The layoffs came shortly after Musk told senior executives that he wanted to be “absolutely hardcore” about reducing Tesla’s workforce and would ask any executive who didn’t meet his expectations to resign.
Will Tesla’s charging slowdown decelerate the EV industry?
The pullback from Tesla threatens charging and EV adoption goals in North America, where the company operates 74% of all high-speed chargers. About 400,000 of those chargers are needed to serve 40 million EVs by 2030, Bloomberg News reported. It’s expected that between 30 and 42 million light-duty EVs will be on the road by then.
Tesla is a major supplier of chargers to hotels and rest stops. The oil giant BP — which recently trimmed its EV workforce — has placed an order for $100 million worth of Superchargers to be installed in its U.S.-based “pulse network.” The chargers are set to be installed at TravelCenters of America, Amoco, and Thorntons sites.
Competition calls
BP on Thursday said it is “aggressively” looking to acquire real estate to expand its network in light of Tesla’s announcement. Overall, the company aims to spend $1 billion by 2030 to expand its network.
“If there are stranded real estate partners who are looking for someone to call, they should feel free to pick up the phone and call me or look me up on LinkedIn,” BP Pulse Americas CEO Sujay Sharma on Thursday told Bloomberg.
Other charging companies, like EVgo, say Tesla’s retreat from charging is “a very significant change in competitive dynamics in the charging space.” The company has said it is in talks with site hosts that had been working with Tesla and is looking to hire talented experts laid off by Tesla.
“Tesla just created the single greatest talent acquisition opportunity for the industry in its history,” said EnviroSpark CEO Aaron Luque. The EV charging infrastructure company, which just closed a $50 million Series B funding round, has received dozens of applications from former Tesla Supercharger employees.