After firing the entire Supercharger team, Tesla sent an email to suppliers explaining how chaotic the decision-making process was that led to the dismissals.
Earlier this week, Tesla suddenly fired its entire Supercharging team, immediately reversing plans to install a supercharger. Now we’ve seen the email Tesla sent to suppliers, and it’s not pretty.
When the layoffs were announced Monday night, there was little information about how they would affect Tesla’s plans.
On Tuesday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that “Tesla still plans to grow the Supercharger network, but at a slower pace for new locations and more focus on 100% uptime and expanding existing locations.” According to Tesla’s website. Superchargers currently have up to 99.95% uptime.
But in the meantime, we’ve already heard about Supercharger projects being cancelled, including… Stopping the offering in the entire state of Australiaincluding sites that were already under long-term leases and had been given the green light for construction that will now be abandoned.
Tesla also sent an email to all of its suppliers, which leaked onto the Internet. Here it is in full, but with revised contact information:
To all concerned:
You may be aware that there has been a recent shake-up with the Supercharger organization which is currently undergoing a sudden and comprehensive restructuring. If you have already received this email, please ignore it as we are trying to communicate with our suppliers and contractors. As part of this process, we are in the midst of creating new leadership roles, prioritizing projects, and streamlining our payment processes. Due to the transitional nature of this phase, we ask for your patience regarding response time.
I realize that this period of change can be difficult and that patience is not easy when I expect to be paid, however, I would like to express my sincere appreciation for your understanding and support as we move through this transition period. At this time, please continue to break ground on any newly awarded construction projects and planned pre-construction tours. If you are currently working on an active supercharged construction site, please continue. communication [email redacted] For further questions, comments and concerns. Additionally, continue to work on any new material requests. communication [email redacted] For further questions, comments and concerns. If you are awaiting late payment, please call [email redacted] To update the status. We thank you for your cooperation and patience.
The email is striking for several reasons, largely because it shows a lack of structure and consideration in the decision to fire the entire team.
First, Tesla stated that it is “trying” to communicate with suppliers and that it may have sent several emails to some of them. This suggests that Tesla doesn’t have an established contact method for all of its suppliers – either it doesn’t have a master contact list, or its previous method of including contact points within Tesla is unusable because those touch points, well the connection would have been triggered.
Second, she says, the “shuffle” (an odd word for firing an entire department) led to a process of creating new leadership roles. This is usually taken into account by the company before Change leaders, ensuring there are existing staff who are experienced and ready to step up to take over the position of the retiring leader, perhaps with a period of mentorship before the outgoing leader retires.
Even in a situation where a firing is a surprise, it is usually reasonable to promote a former deputy in command to fill the void. This is why it helps to have a deep seat – which is useful Tesla has promoted it before.
Third, Tesla continues to point out that these suppliers “expect to get paid,” suggesting that Tesla is likely to back away from its payment commitments, at least in the short term. We’ve seen Musk refuse to pay bills beforeSo the mention of payment evasion should ring alarm bells for suppliers who were working in good faith with Tesla.
Finally, Tesla is asking suppliers to continue construction on active projects, while sticking to kick-off construction or pre-construction site tours. This can be considered unclear, because there are many parallel steps to approving, permitting and building sites, so it is difficult to establish a single, easily communicated line about which sites should proceed and which sites should not. Site contacts within Tesla are supposed to be able to reach out to individual sites and tell them whether or not they’ll continue construction — if they’re still working there, which they appear to be not.
Asking for patience is reasonable when a company is hit by unforeseen circumstances, but this is not an unforeseen circumstance – it is entirely of Tesla’s own making.
Other charging providers have reacted to Tesla disrupting its Supercharger plans, with at least one company, Revel, indicating it is ready to pounce. “Really good locations” that Tesla left on the tableespecially at Revell’s home in New York City.
Take Electric
We have heard from several sources who have told us that the reason for these dismissals is that Rebecca Tenucci, the former head of Tesla’s electric vehicle charging division, resisted Musk’s request to fire large parts of her team.
Although this is just hearsay, it is plausible to consider the language used in Musk’s speech announcing the firings – in which he claimed that some executives were not taking headcount reductions seriously, and pointed out that the executives… Those who retain the wrong employees may see themselves and their entire teams laid off. It’s not a stretch to think that Musk included these demands since they were related to his firing of Tinucci and her team.
The Supercharging team has been one of the most successful and important teams within Tesla, and many observers consider the Supercharging network to be Tesla’s primary “moat” that sets it apart from competitors. Tinucci was also responsible for negotiating NACS agreements across the industry, which led to a major win when the Tesla plug became the de facto standard after basically every automaker adopted it over the past year.
Superchargers are also very important, especially in North America. In Europe there are more successful non-Tesla charging providers, but in North America, Tesla is the big dog. If infrastructure is important, Tesla’s withdrawal is bad not only for Tesla, but for electric vehicles as a whole.
It seems pretty clear that, whatever explanation we accept, the Supercharger team’s firing was not well thought out (and our readers seem to agree). Even if headcount reduction is necessary, the entire team should not be laid off. Even if it were necessary as a retaliatory measure – which would not be a good justification – it would still be wise to keep some of it to avoid the chaos suggested by the email above.
Whatever mechanism led to his firing, it fits a pattern of increasingly erratic behavior that Musk has displayed recently.
Many possible explanations have been offered to explain this behavior, most of which do nothing to add to my personal belief that Musk will make the right decisions with Tesla.
As I said in our original post about Tesla’s first round of layoffs, we need Tesla to continue moving the industry forward. While Pandora’s box is open and electric vehicles are here to stay at this point, regardless of Tesla’s relatively rare rises and falls, the rest of the industry is still trying hard to rein in the transformation, even if it means America will be less competitive if those companies manage to achieve What she wants.
Tesla is one of the few entities large enough and committed enough to pull those timelines forward, whether the rest of the industry likes it or not. We need a healthy Tesla, and for that we need more consistent management. This email is not an example of that, and neither are most of Musk’s recent administrative actions.
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