① de Zegher retweeted a “Tesla Charging” post on social media, or confirmed the news that he himself had returned to Tesla; ② At the end of April this year, Musk announced that while firing Rebecca Tinucci, senior director of the supercharging business, and Daniel Ho, head of the new car project, he plans to fire all of their subordinate employees.
Financial Services Association, May 14 (Editor: Zhao Hao) According to media reports, Tesla in the US has begun to rehire some employees from the former supercharging business. Last month, this department of about 500 people was disbanded by the company.
People familiar with the matter revealed that among the key personnel who have returned to Tesla is Max de Zegher, the head of the charging business in North America. Shortly before publication, de Zegher retweeted a “Tesla Charging” post on social media, or confirmed that he himself had returned to Tesla.
At the end of April this year, Tesla CEO Musk sent an internal memorandum announcing that while firing Rebecca Tinucci, senior supercharging business executive, and Daniel Ho, the new car project leader, he plans to fire all of the two employees. Among them, the supercharging business has about 500 people, and de Zegher's position is second only to Tinucci.
At the time, Musk's move to disband the team shocked the entire electric vehicle industry because there are many opinions that compared to projects such as the electric pickup truck Cybertruck and the driverless taxi Robotaxi, the supercharging business was Tesla's “smartest product”. Because it was far ahead of its peers, almost no one could compete with it.
Over the past year, several car manufacturers have successively signed agreements with Tesla to use Tesla's North American Charging Standard (NACS). Musk's “breaking arms” has even led many car companies to privately doubt whether Tesla is “crazy.” Analysts also believe that this may eventually curb Tesla's electric vehicle sales growth.
At the beginning of this month, Musk said on social media that Tesla will continue to expand the supercharging pile network, but the pace of expanding new charging stations will slow down, while paying more attention to operating efficiency and expanding existing sites.
However, after receiving widespread opposition, Musk changed his voice on Friday to say that Tesla will spend more than 500 million US dollars this year to build thousands of charging piles and expand the supercharging network. He also specifically pointed out that $500 million is only the cost of deploying the site and expanding it, and does not include “much higher” operating costs.
It should be pointed out that historically, Musk has sought remedies after impulsively cutting costs on more than one occasion. In 2019, Musk announced that Tesla would close most of its stores and switch to “pure online sales” to cut costs, causing huge chaos in the sales team, and then it didn't go away.
At the end of 2022, a similar situation occurred with the Twitter company he had just acquired. Shortly after Musk fired about half of its employees, dozens of employees were asked to return to the company.