Crazy. I've been a long-term Musk supporter (because of meaningful business targets: EVs and Mars colonization), but these recent events I cannot support. Laying off employees while not at the same time demanding Universal Basic Income on a state level (so that no single corporation is disadvantaged) is a death sentence to the worker population, and that, I cannot support. I'm out.
I stopped being a Musk supporter when I found out he had a twitter.
I still think all of his companies are doing (to various extents) genuinely cool and useful things, but Musk in recent years at least has shown himself to be a terrible manager (not to mention a terrible person)
Is that because the automotive industry decided to go with the North American standard for rapid chargers instead of Tesla's? If so, while heartless, it makes sense from a business standpoint.
The NACS connector is the Tesla connector. NACS was entirely their doing; Tesla won this format war. So what's for them to be salty about?
The only wrinkle is that older Teslas require a reflash to work with the new (or rather old, same as CCS) communication standard that would be used by NACS equipped non-Tesla charging stations.
Ah ok. I thought they were different. I actually just listened to a podcast the other day about electric vehicles, and the guest expert mentioned something about there being a NA standard, European standard, and Tesla. Maybe I just misunderstood him.
There were CCS the North American kind, CCS the European kind and Tesla. Everybody in the US has pledged to switch over to Tesla in the last year though.
It hasn't been proprietary for a little while, its an official standard now. They had to open it in order to receive government funding for charger construction.
The North American Charging Standard (NACS), being standardized as SAE J3400, is an electric vehicle (EV) charging connector system developed by Tesla, Inc. It has been used by all North American market Tesla vehicles since 2021 and was opened for use by other manufacturers in November 2022. It is backwards compatible with the proprietary Tesla connectors made before 2021. (link)
When you have a narcissistic sociopath for a boss don't expect job security. All these layoffs and his insane letter will do is cultivate toadying, fear, distrust, cliques and a culture of backstabbing within Tesla.
Ahhh, the trustworthy test. Sounds like the same type of test that Trump plans to use in his hiring process. Coincidence? I think not. All part of the fascist playbook.
NACS, which is essentially the Tesla charger, was made available to other car manufacturers at no cost already, in 2022. Due to a few reasons, among them the existence of Tesla superchargers already deployed, a lot of companies have adopted this as their charger for newer cars.
Even if Tesla went down completely, their charger is already open, so nah I don't expect any changes based on this.
Yeah I'm kinda surprised they made it open, to be honest. But they did, and its in a way that can't be retracted, so nothing depends on their continuing good behavior.
Also, I think Tesla saw the way the wind was blowing on standardization. Eventually, the DOT will enforce a standard plug, and if it's not YOURS, suddenly you have to either remanufacture the cars you're making, or otherwise refit them to work with the new standard.
A requirement for them to receive $7.5 billion in government funding for charger construction was for them to allow other cars to charge on their network, which required opening the standard.
Short term, they dramatically increased access to credible fast charging.
Longer term, near as I can tell, third party NACS fast charging will commence. So while this may be a disaster for Tesla and the Tesla charging network per se, long term it has room for another company to come along and displace Tesla.
If such a company were looking for a team to drive such an initiative, it seems we all know where to find one now...
NACS is essentially CCS in a Tesla plug, so the only reason there isn't any yet is that nobody has made the switch yet - any CCS charger could be converted by just swapping the plug.
But it also means passive adapters work and are cheap, so there's no hurry really.
Honestly, EV-Go or Electrify America building NACS chargers isn't going to fix anything. The plug isn't what makes the Supercharger network appealing, it's the fact they ensure the stations are ubiquitous, fully functional, and the payment is seamless. If he's throwing out the team that is making sure those things continue to be true, the charging problem is only going to get worse.
If anything, it was a major coup by Tesla to make their plug the standard when they have the largest existing charging network for that plug. Now they're in a position of letting other networks catch up.
This decision is bafflingly stupid. Is firing people the only way Musk can get hard anymore?
I didn't really follow. Because the way it happened was, Tesla can make money from it's charging stations and other OEMs get a robust charging network.
My point is that even if nacs is open, it is a monopoly. Tomorrow Tesla decides to ask 100$ per month to access the network and you can't go somewhere else. In EU the mandatory plug is the same for everyone and Tesla chargers must have ccs2 and Tesla cars must have ccs2..
I understand that. But building chargers using their ports is an option and will be something that happens. It just answers the customers of other OEMs of whether to charge their cars now.
And even if Tesla controls a significant portion of the charging infrastructure now there'll be others that build chargers with that standard with time.
And I'm sure there was some closed door agreement they came up with on pricing
Dude it's how many years of "electrify America" project that is supposedly supported by the biggest car manufacturer and the network is terrible. Nobody will go compete with nacs because Tesla has the market penetration and it's ubiquitous. I guess the mon-tesla will change the plugs on some select locations and that's it. But we'll see how it goes with the supercharger network after musk fired the entire team...
NACS is an open standard. Tesla could fold tomorrow and it would still be a good idea for the other manufacturers to switch to it so we don’t have multiple competing plug standards in this country.
Is it really so? The specs are open, and Tesla has been permissive about letting other companies use their patents, but what would happen if they changed their minds?
If it's a "trim" that is a vague percentage without any standout cuts in recognized people or groups, then good. If there are recognized names or groups, but they are people associated with widely known failures, like a team whose sole responsibility is a proven financial failure, good or even better. If you have people caught up in it who are well recognized for critical successes, then the investors won't be so bullish.
Here we see two groups seen as responsible for the key success factors of Tesla obliterated, with very little external signs of why this could be a rational move. The other layoffs might have been viewed well, even if some of them were also bad news, but I think these two will be viewed as bad news.
Also, this may be seen as a missed opportunity. Tesla established SC network as the premiere EV charging solution, and made it credibly cover other manufacturers, setting it up as independently valuable with it without Tesala. Tesla ditched the entire team, putting that at risk and taking on expenses to let go of those people for long term salary savings. A different business might have sold off the group intact, not only avoiding severance expense, but also getting a big check in the process from some other company. Keeping the "business" with none of the actual people is a bizarre move.
Amazon has been trimming employee numbers for close to three years now. Any large layoffs now see a dip in stock, so most of the layoffs this year have been small-scale to not worry the investors.
True, at some point investors switch from "good, they are improving efficiency" or "good, they are making way for higher quality hires" to "uhh, is there a problem? Are you going to keep going and risk going under some unknown critical threshold that will impact the health of your business?".
Nailed it. This round of layoffs is not just "trimming a bloated labor force," it's cutting off investment into the future of Tesla as a company, which is a really bad business move when you had an advantage in the past but are now losing it. Turns out not only Musk is a filthy rich a-hole, he's also terrible at keeping businesses competitive. He absolutely needs to resign if Tesla wants to not fail.
Cutting the supercharger team could be a hedge for Musk personally. The stock tanking seems likely now, so not having this team makes them a less attractive acquisition.
I made several thousand dollars in the stock market by buying stocks that announce layoffs. They almost always jump after the announcement unless it has to do with other circumstances like bankruptcy.
My dude, never underestimate wall streets ability to ignore tsla failing. They will hold that stock. Shorting tsla is a fools errand. The people who own tsla are immune to reality.
Everything good that tsla owners were banking on has already happened. The gravy days are in the past but… the insane valuation persists.
Musk has been reading about all the layoffs happening at other companies who are now floundering due to the loss of institutional competence and memory, and goes "we need some of that shiat STAT!"
