500 Supercharger Staff Laid Off… Charging Station Expansion Put on Sudden Brakes
US government and other OEMs in trouble… Tesla’s moves can only be watched Following the news of Tesla's Supercharger layoffs, attention is being paid to the actions of the U.S. government and other electric vehicle manufacturers.
News broke on the 1st that Tesla CEO Elon Musk would lay off most of the 500 or so employees in charge of the company's Supercharger charging stations and slow down the expansion of its charging stations.
Elon Musk said on X (formerly Twitter) that Tesla still plans to expand its Supercharger network, but will do so at a slower pace for new locations and with a greater focus on expanding and achieving 100% utilization of existing locations.
The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), which announced in June of last year that it would set technical standards for Tesla's charger connection method, the North American Charging Standard (NACS), announced the Technical Information Report (TIR) for the NASC standard on December 19.
This report is expected to serve as a foundation for enabling North American electric vehicle and charging station manufacturers and suppliers to manufacture and distribute NACS standard connectors, and the standardization of NACS technology will enable OEMs as well as charger companies to support NACS.It was expected that Tesla's dependence on imports would decrease.
Ford and GM in the U.S., Honda and Toyota in Japan, and Mercedes-Benz in Germany had already announced that they would use the NACS method, and Hyundai Motor Company also announced in July last year that it would introduce it in vehicles exported to the U.S. starting in the fourth quarter of 2024. Audi and Porsche, along with Volkswagen, which had been considering introducing NACS, have also officially announced the adoption of NACS.
Tesla operates more than 20,000 chargers at 1,900 charging stations across the United States, which is two-thirds of the total chargers in the country.
NACS was welcomed by electric vehicle owners because the cable was light and there was no display or card payment terminal on the charger, so there was no inconvenience caused by charger failure.
Additionally, unlike other CCS1s, the rapid and slow ports are not divided, and can handle up to 1,000 kW and 1 MW.
When the U.S. government demanded that Superchargers be opened as a condition for subsidizing the construction of charging stations, Tesla accepted and opened part of the charging network so that other manufacturers could use it by connecting a MagicDock that can also use the CCS1 standard.
The Biden administration has been supporting the industry by creating the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 to provide subsidies to expand electric vehicles and allocating $7.5 billion (about 10.4175 trillion won) to the 'NEVI' program to expand charging infrastructure.
In addition, automakers that make electric vehicles were struggling between the existing US standard CCS standard and Tesla's NACS standard, which already accounts for about 60% of the entire US charging network, when it came to the method of connecting chargers, and decided to adopt Tesla's NACS method as well.
The biggest companies, Ford Motor and General Motors (GM), have agreed to not only install the NACS standard in their vehicles but also use Tesla's charging stations. It was also announced that it had done so.
Other manufacturers appeared to be exempt from having to install chargers in the United States that conform to their own charging standards.
Changing the charging terminal and exporting it is much cheaper than installing the infrastructure, and there is no need to compete with NACS, which has a high user experience satisfaction, so it is like killing two birds with one stone.
The American media predicted that if Tesla's Supercharger layoffs slow down the expansion of the charging network, it will affect the speed of electric vehicle distribution by other manufacturers and also deal a blow to the Biden administration's policy of focusing on the transition to electric vehicles.
The United States had expected that when NACS technology was standardized, OEMs and charger companies would reduce Tesla's dependence on NACS, but the government and manufacturers' reactions to Tesla's decision this time are different from the previous expectations.
This judgment by the American media proves that other manufacturers' dependence on Tesla is by no means low.
This could be a difficult situation for other electric vehicle manufacturers, but they have no choice but to watch Tesla's progress.
From Tesla's perspective, allowing other vehicles to charge, not just its own electric vehicles, is nothing more than a service.
It remains to be seen whether manufacturers will make quick decisions and build their own charging stations or wait for the Supercharger team to reorganize.