By Lore Ramirez
May 2, 2024, 12:50 PM EDT
Tesla has laid off hundreds of employees from the charging station team and many customers have questions about what seems like an abrupt decision by the company. In an email to Tesla executives it was reported that Rebecca Tinucci, Tesla’s senior director of vehicle charging, would leave the company and that almost the entire team under her would be firedaccording to information shared by The Information.
Lane Chaplin, now former director of real estate at Tesla, confirmed through a post on LinkedIn the fired from the Supercharger team. “In the middle of the night, I learned, along with all my colleagues at Tesla Global Charging, that the Tesla Charging organization no longer exists,” the post reads.
How many people were laid off from Tesla’s charging station team?
The new wave of layoffs at Tesla, which mainly affected the Supercharger team, ended almost 500 jobs and some were reassigned to other teams, according to information shared by The Information. Tesla announced in early April that it would lay off 10% of its workforce.
The Information also shared that Daniel Ho, head of the new vehicle program, and his employees will be laid off; Furthermore the Tesla public policy team will be dissolved. Rohan Patel, former vice president of public policy and business development, left Tesla in early April.
“Hopefully these actions make it clear that we must be absolutely tough on staffing and cost cutting. While some executive staff take this seriously, most still don’t,” Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, shared in the email, according to The Information.
Layoffs at Tesla raise doubts
The decision of Firing Tesla Charging Station Team Employees Surprised Many Automakers that were preparing to equip their new units so that they could use the Tesla Supercharger network. So far it is known that General Motor, Ford, and other automakers that reached agreements last year to give customers access to Tesla’s Supercharger network will not change their plans.
The Tesla’s decision to open its charging network to rival electric vehicle manufacturers, provided the opportunity for the company to obtain federal grants to expand the reach of its North American Charging Standard system.
The new wave of layoffs at Tesla continues to add numbers
At the beginning of April, Musk and Vaibhav Taneja, Tesla’s chief financial officer, touched on the topic of layoffs on a conference call about the company’s results and explained the job cuts as “any tree that grows needs to be pruned.”
The Reno Gazette Journal reported Tuesday that Tesla had issued a layoff notice for 693 employees in the state, primarily at Gigafactory 1 in Sparks.. On April 22, Tesla published a layoff notice for 2,688 employees at Austin, Texas factory. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that 2,735 workers in the Bay Area would be laid off the next day.
According to Reuters, Until the end of 2023 Tesla had 140,473 employees Worldwide.
Keep reading:
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– 4 facts that explain the crisis that Tesla is going through and that led the company to lay off thousands of employees
– In California there is one charging station for electric cars for every five gas stations