Elon Musk says Tesla is spending $500 million on Superchargers this year after firing entire team

Elon Musk says Tesla is going to spend over $500 million on expanding the Supercharger network this year after firing the entire charging team.

It says a lot about the reason behind the firing.

Last week, Elon Musk fired Tesla’s entire charging team amid broader layoffs at the company.

We reported that the move resulted in Tesla backing out of leases on planned Supercharger stations and a lot of confusion amongst its partners in ongoing projects.

This undoubtedly will result in Tesla’s slowing down its charging station deployment.

Musk previously said that Tesla still plans to deploy Superchargers, but at a slower rate and with a focus on adding chargers to existing stations.

Now, the CEO says that Tesla will spend more than $500 million on expanding the Supercharger network this year:

Tesla has never released its cost of Supercharger deployment, but some data points point toward $45,000 to $50,000 per charger, which would mean a $500 million spent this year would require roughly the same deployment as in Q1 – the last quarter when Tesla had a full Supercharger team.

We previously reported that Musk fired the Supercharger team after the head of the team Rebecca Tinucci, pushed back against the level of layoffs that the CEO requested.

Musk responded by firing her and her entire team of roughly 500 people and then sent an email to other executives warning them that he will ask for their resignation if they don’t fire the number of people he is requesting.

Electrek’s Take

This pretty much confirmed what I have been talking about regarding Elon’s decision to fire the entire charging team.

It had nothing to do with any change of plan regarding charging.

The head of charging pushed back against layoffs and Elon made an example of her and her entire team was collateral damage. It was a rash and impulsive move, which he is known to do.

It was not based on any mission-driven initiative or change of plan regarding Superchargers.

Yet, you have Elon’s suckophants claiming this is a genius move for x, y or z reasons.

There will undoubtedly be a slowdown in Supercharger deployment in the coming months after contractors go through everything in the pipeline. Customers will be affected, especially if other automakers continue to get onboarded into the network. That’s inevitable.