Prison time likely

Most experts who spoke to CNBC about the upcoming sentencing predict Zhao will spend some time behind bars.

“This is a high-profile case and the judge will feel pressure not to be soft during sentencing,” Former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani told CNBC. He expects a sentence of a year or two.

Braden Perry, a former senior trial lawyer for the CFTC, said federal sentencing guidelines provide a framework but allow judges some discretion.

“For CZ, a first-time nonviolent offender, the sentencing guidelines call for an advisory range of 10 to 16 months,” said Perry, currently a partner at law firm Kennyhertz Perry.

Working in Zhao’s favor, Perry said, is that the defendant never went to trial, saving judicial and prosecutorial resources, and that he accepted responsibility and settled with multiple agencies, all concessions that might influence the judge’s decision.

“I believe the judge will acknowledge the vast scale of potential suspicious transactions and the prior lax AML program but recognize the efforts and remediation taken,” Perry said. “Taking into account all the factors, I predict a guideline sentence with a term of incarceration. This will deter yet account for the guilty plea and all other factors used in the sentencing decision.”

Yesha Yadav, law professor and associate dean at Vanderbilt University, is looking for the judge to impose a sentence “in the low single digits – perhaps three years.” However, that could include minimal time in prison and the rest on probation.

Yadav suggested that Zhao will benefit from Binance’s contrast to FTX, which was “revealed to have been a criminal enterprise.“

“While Binance has been convicted of extremely serious charges, it still remains an operational, albeit weakened, business that continues to attract customers and is looking to revive its fortunes by focusing on compliance under a monitorship regime,” Yadav said.

Former federal prosecutor Paul Tuchmann also expects some prison time due to the failure to implement AML requirements, as well as the volume of funds that flowed through Binance without being subject to such controls.

Just after laying off “more than 10%” of its global workforce, Tesla is laying off even more employees – including senior executives and long-time veterans of the company, most notably the entire Supercharging team and the executive responsible for negotiating NACS adoption across the industry.

Tesla started the week before last with news of a huge round of layoffs.

The layoffs were quite broad across the company. Tesla shortened production shifts at Gigafactory Texas and cleared out several teams associated with critical projects there.

One of those heads was Drew Baglino, former VP of Powertrain and Energy Engineering, who had been with the company for 18 years and led the 4680 cell project. While his resignation is being publicly portrayed as voluntary, it is speculated that disappointment with progress on the 4680 project had something to do with it.

Tesla also lost key executive Rohan Patel, its head of policy and business development, during these layoffs.

And as we learned last week, the company also fired its entire new ad team.

But when we originally heard about Tesla’s upcoming layoffs, the rumors we heard suggested that the numbers could involve up to 20% of the company’s workforce. We had seen other signals that layoffs might be coming, but the specific tip came from an anonymous source within Tesla who was correct about the layoff’s timing, though not correct about its scale.

Now, more layoffs have been finalized through an email from CEO Elon Musk to executives, first reported by The Information, stating that 6-year veteran Rebecca Tinucci, Tesla’s Senior Director of EV charging, would be leaving the company on Tuesday, along with nearly all of her 500-person charging team (“a few” employees will be reassigned, according to The Information).

Tinucci was responsible for Tesla’s EV charging business, including Supercharging, which means that the cutting of the Supercharger team may reflect a change in direction for Tesla. Tesla has been very successful at getting manufacturers to adopt its NACS plug – an effort led by Tinucci, which got her onto the TIME 100 Climate list – leading many to suggest that it will be able to run a profitable energy delivery business for a long time to come (here’s her presentation from Investor Day 2023).

The email states that Tesla will continue to build out some new Superchargers, and will finish those under construction. But relieving the team of its duty may signal a reduction in buildout of the system – at a time when, if anything, faster charging station deployment is needed.

Another executive layoff is 10-year veteran Daniel Ho, Director of Vehicle Programs and New Product Initiatives, who was program manager for the Model S, 3 and Y and had previously served 12 years at Ford in product roles.

In recent quarters, Tesla has guided for a “pause” inbetween growth phases, expecting that sales growth would be more modest until the release of next-gen vehicles like the cheaper “Model 2” and robotaxi products. There has been some back–and–forth over what form those products would take – but laying off the head of New Product Initiatives reflects potential problems within that team as well.

Further, most of former executive Rohan Patel’s public policy team will be eliminated – at a time when many public policy challenges around DC charging, home charging, emissions standards, climate change, and political hostility to superior EV technology are still looming.

Musk said, in his typical bluster, that he wants Tesla to be “absolutely hard core” about headcount reduction, saying that executives whose subordinates “don’t obviously pass the excellent, necessary and trustworthy test” would find themselves relieved of duty as well – suggesting that he wants those executives to fire more employees or be fired themselves.

All of this news comes at a critical time for Tesla, following a quarterly earnings miss in which Tesla significantly missed delivery and earnings estimates, and had a rare year-over-year reduction in sales

Tesla’s layoffs come at a time when many other companies in the tech industry are laying off staff, in an apparent game of follow-the-leader while industry profits are still high.

Electrek’s Take

Firstly – it makes absolutely no sense to lay off the Supercharger team. Supercharging is an incredible opportunity for Tesla, especially now that everyone else has adopted NACS.

Tesla has a fairly simple business case from here on out to become the leading “gas station of the future.” With its experience and lead on Superchargers, its more reliable and better-designed stations, and its existing business footprint with so many stations installed around the globe, the company has a natural lead. This business case is even stronger now that the entire industry is behind NACS.

To lay off that whole team just when the company has earned such a big win, when billions in public money is available for buildout (which would not have been available without industry NACS adoption, which was, again, spearheaded by Tinucci’s negotiations), and when there is a lead to be maintained, is absolutely crazy. This move, alone, would erode any confidence I had left in Tesla’s CEO – if I still had any.

On layoffs in general, we noted in our coverage of Tesla’s layoffs that the worst part about situations like this is that they greatly affect morale. We imagine morale can’t be great within Tesla right now after huge layoffs, but there can at least be a sense of relief that they’re over after a large round of layoffs closes.

But if Tesla is still doing layoffs, that sense of relief is gone, and employees will still be wondering whether they might show up to work without a job, as we heard happened to many employees on the first day of layoffs.

And while the last layoffs were distasteful enough, continued layoffs have even worse optics, given Tesla’s move to ask shareholders for a $55 billion payout for its CEO just days after firing 14,000 people. That $55 billion could pay for 40 years worth of six-figure salaries for those employees. Quite a large payday for a part-time CEO, made worse by the potential loss of livelihood for more employees who might still be on the chopping block.

Speculatively, there may even be more layoffs coming. A source who was correct about coming layoffs but not exactly correct about their scale or timing told us that potentially another 5% of staff could be laid off, including executives and long-time employees dating back to the Roadster days. These layoffs seem close to that rumor (though, again, on a smaller scale), but it’s possible that there may be more coming. Watch this space for news.

Gogoro, the global leader in battery-swapping for light electric vehicles like scooters and motorcycles, just can’t seem to slow down. After a week full of major news, the company is back with perhaps its biggest announcement lately: a plan for a major partnership that will see the company greatly expand the use of its swappable battery standard.

Oh, and not just for light electric vehicles anymore.

Today, Gogoro announced signing an MOU to form a new partnership with Japanese giants Sumitomo Corporation and Sumitomo Mitsui Finance and Leasing Co., Ltd. (SMFL) to accelerate Gogoro’s global business expansion. The agreement is set to provide Sumitomo and SMFL access to Gogoro’s Smart Batteries and battery-swapping system to allow the companies to expand their mobility business and second-life battery use cases.

It’s hard to overstate Sumitomo’s magnitude, owning over 900 subsidiary companies with 80,000 employees. With a reach across broad industries including automotive, transportation & construction systems, and diverse urban development, Sumitomo is poised to help drastically expand the use of Gogoro’s swappable battery standard.

Many people think of Gogoro as an electric scooter company, but Gogoro is really more of an energy platform. Sure, the company is famous for its fashion-forward and high-performance electric scooters, but the Gogoro swappable battery standard is the key to Gogoro’s success.

The batteries are designed to power not just electric scooters (either Gogoro’s own or the countless other OEMs that now build light electric vehicles powered by Gogoro batteries), but also to power many other devices. That’s why partnerships are a key part of Gogoro’s growth model, leveraging the success of the batteries in its electric scooters to position them for even more far-flung energy uses.

“Gogoro’s innovative business ecosystem is designed to create broader business partnerships and business models that were not previously possible. Today, Sumitomo and SMFL are looking to accelerate Gogoro’s global business expansion while utilizing Gogoro Smart Batteries and battery swapping to drive expansion of their own mobility business and second life battery revenue,” said Horace Luke, founder and CEO of Gogoro. “Together, Gogoro, Sumitomo and SMFL share a vision for accelerating the expansion of sustainable energy and transportation in the world’s most densely populated cities.”

“Gogoro’s potential partnership with Sumitomo and SMFL, a global leader in financing and leasing, would establish a new asset class using Gogoro smart batteries to create new business opportunities for Sumitomo and SMFL to utilize Gogoro’s batteries for expanding their mobility business as well as generating second life battery revenue,” said Bruce Aiken, CFO of Gogoro. “Amongst the many new business opportunities, this partnership would enable a new asset-light expansion model for Gogoro that doesn’t require a large upfront capital investment while increasing the financial efficiency of our new markets.”

Gogoro has been on a tear lately, expanding into new markets with both its SmartScooters and its swappable batteries. This new partnership could help expedite that expansion and open up new opportunities for those very batteries to extend their useful lives even further.

By using Big Data to intelligently charge and cycle its battery packs by monitoring dozens of parameters across millions of batteries, Gogoro has been able to pull an impressive lifespan from its more than 1.8 million battery packs and counting. When the batteries first began circulation back in 2015, Gogoro estimated that the packs would last nearly a decade. More recently, the company has pushed that estimate out to around 12 years, largely thanks to its intelligent charging capabilities and sophisticated operations management that helps optimize battery distribution and use.

But even when the batteries have finished their useful life for mobility applications, an entire range of second-life uses remain. Gogoro already has several stationary energy storage applications in use, such as powering smart parking meters and serving as backup power for traffic lights when the energy grid falls. But there are countless more examples of energy storage projects that would be ideal for such a small format and easily manageable battery packs built on a common standard.

An agreement with Sumitomo could be a key accelerator for Gogoro, as SMFL’s mid-term management plan strategy includes the realization of a battery circular economy through the creation of a battery reuse and recycling business using Gogoro’s smart batteries. According to the announcement, SMFL plans to seek new unique business opportunities using Gogoro’s smart batteries as a new asset class for mobile second-life sustainable energy usage.