Why did Elon Musk Fire the Entire Supercharger Team?

­The industry is still reeling from the news that Elon Musk sacked his entire Supercharger team. The biggest question seems to be – why?

Musk made the surprising announcement last week, shocking everyone who saw the Supercharger network as one of Tesla’s greatest triumphs.

As of January 2024, the Supercharger network comprised about 6,000 stations, with about 55,000 connectors. No other company in the U.S. could come close to matching the network’s size or its ease-of-use.

Tesla has also accepted about $28 million in federal contracts for charging stations, and after this sudden pivot, it’s unclear whether those contracts can be fulfilled.

But more than anything, consumers and industry observers were left asking why.

“Charging is a difficult business, there’s no doubt about that,” said an EV industry source. “The margins are very slim and it’s quite cutthroat. They were ahead of the game, so it does strike me as odd to relinquish that a little bit.”

The federal money could simply go elsewhere, but why did Tesla make this move?

I’d love to say it’s something cryptic – after all, suddenly gutting the labor force of one of Tesla’s greatest successes deserves a multifaceted explanation. But in the end, it just appears to be a cost-cutting measure, part of the “absolutely hard core” reductions Musk has previously alluded to.

And Tesla isn’t stepping back completely.

“Tesla still plans to grow the Supercharger network, just at a slower pace for new locations and more focus on 100% uptime and expansion of existing locations,” Musk wrote on X/Twitter.

So there ya go – one of the most dramatic and stunning piece of news in the EV space was a mere cost-cutting measure, and future expansion will just be at a slower pace, not eliminated completely.