Tesla Just Fired Their Entire Charging Team! Impacts, Future Supercharger Sites, & Industry Shakeup

this video is brought to you by star charge the largest EV charging manufacturer in the world they are also a provider of residential and Commercial battery storage with micro grid Solutions hello and welcome to another out of speec reviews video and welcome to an episode I thought I would never be making uh I'm sure by now most of you who are viewers of this channel have heard the news Tesla has let go almost the entire charging team and I want to talk about the impacts of this in the short term and perhaps the Ripple effects into the future for the whole charging industry an industry we cover very closely here on this channel not only do we review cars but we talk about charging infrastructure and this is maybe one of the biggest blows to electric vehicle adoption that I've seen in many years and I think a lot of people are confused including me and so I thought I would just share my thoughts with you we've also produced an out ofpc podcast episode that one up right as the news broke yesterday and with some initial thoughts but now I've received quite literally hundreds of messages from people in the charging industry those that were affected those that work at other companies such as other automakers that have agreed to sign on with Tesla and I'm going to share some of the overall General sentiment about what's happening right now at the end of April 2024 but all I can tell you is the people that made it possible to do this and plug in and charge no longer work at Tesla which is crazy as this was Tesla's most important side of the business from my side so that's what we're talking about in today's episode well to be honest I'm not even sure how to do this video because charging is something that we have covered so closely we've loved charging and it's enabled so many road trips and honestly a lot of out of specs coverage has started around charging and I think it's pretty clear that the supercharger network is not just getting shut down unplugged condemned uh and as far as I understand it the nice thing is all of the maintenance technicians that will maintain and upkeep the supercharger Network are still there and so as a current owner of a Tesla and other vehicles that now have access to the supercharger Network such as the rivan r1t that I drive very often I'm feeling pretty confident that I can still have access to all the charging points that I had access to yesterday and I'm pretty confident that they will be maintained however the whole industry including me was pushing so hard to make Knack a thing to get automakers on board with the honestly much better plug type with a charging Network that seemed to have no real competition in the sense that this could have been a monopoly of just Chargers everywhere and and an insane amount of new Chargers coming online even recently up until recently Tesla's had an exponential increase in new charging locations and of course with version 4 chargers right on the horizon and Magic doc sites being rolled out even more frequently I thought damn who can even come close to Tesla and just as it seemed from the outside looking in that the whole Tesla supercharging team had it together they had future plans Tesla supercharging employees tweeting posting only days before everyone was let go this is just the beginning watch and see what we're going to do uh we hear the news that at least originally the news was the Tesla basically dissolved the entire charging team uh which consists of around 500 people I'm not sure what the exact number of people are affected but I do know it's a lot and it's comes as a huge shock to us and the industry so I think let's start there let's talk about the initial reactions I'm just going to pull up a few messages and a few trends that I've been seeing online about this particular issue the first thing I've noticed is a lot of commentary by Tesla shareholders Tesla enthusiasts and Elon Fanboys I certainly never bring up I review cars and not people and not companies I've been saying that a lot the last couple days because this is out of my wheelhouse to comment on something like this however the one thing I've noticed from a lot of prominent accounts on Twitter a lot of which I agree most of the time with what they say and I'm friends with a lot of these people they went from supercharger networks are increasing hardcore this is the profit Center for Tesla this is what's changing the entire EV industry to now saying oh actually you know no new sites coming we don't need superchargers anyway most people charge at home I'm like what is going on with these people so there's a general shift in um conversation and it mostly comes from a tweet that Elon tweeted and I want to read it verbatim to you so if I come over here to his account uh Elon says this is 19 hours ago at least at the time of this recording Tesla still plans to grow the supercharger Network which is great so there still will be new Chargers coming in they claim just at a slower pace for new locations which to me sounds like a lot of the sites that were in the pipeline that were going to be coming perhaps even the nevi sites which is a topic I was going to do a whole video on um coming soon but now maybe no one's even there to watch it um but a slower pace for new locations and then a more of a focus on 100% uptime an expansion of existing locations okay we're going to talk a little bit more about that expansion of new locations versus creating new charging stations because um 100% 100% up time great Tesla already already has some of the best uptime in the industry and pretty much it's very rare to find a supercharging handle that's not working there are bugs there are issues and I think that brings me to what may have caused Tesla to do this um there have been bugs and issues with superchargers since the beginning I remember early version 2 days we used to have to wrap these handles with wet Rags so we could get faster charging that's happening again with cybertruck on version 3 version 4 chargers have we have not even seen one yet we don't even know what the specifications of that charger will be and so perhaps there was some frustration about okay is version 4 not happening as soon as Elon was expecting or Executives at Tesla were expecting I'm not totally sure um there were also interoperability bugs where occasionally cybertruck wouldn't charge if you plugged in at a low state of charge above 35 Kow it would basically limit you to 100 amps and and um you know the list goes on and on they they don't have a high voltage charging Network to interface with all the vehicles they've just opened up the network to so tyon and ionic 5 and other high voltage Vehicles Lucid would have to use onboard boosters or split pack in order to interface natively with the Tesla Supercharger Network these were all issues but I think yes while they had a bunch of issues and while we were right there showing the issues um you know of course I think if if they had a version 4 Network the cybertruck may have won the coast to coast race across the country it's very possible um even with all those issues Tesla superchargers are still the Clear Choice for Ev drivers because of the maintenance and reliability of the hardware um so again these are just speculations but perhaps the team was let go from a the hardware just not keeping up with modern-day Vehicles not being 800 Volt or even a th000 volt uh compliance which means technically in my mind they should never have received nevi funding or should be about to receive nevi funding for any site because um there was a loophole in the nevi wording that said if you support a voltage range within 250 to 950 volts I forget what the low end is then you technically qualify and Tesla was like oh but we support up to 500 volts that's within the range but in the spirit of the nevi law is you need to support any voltage range natively from you know 200 volts up to 950 or whatever the exact numbers are and so Tesla was going to get nevi funding for Chargers that in my mind did not meet the requirements of the law uh and for the funding so this was another topic that could have led to it so those to me all seem like little issues and little things that are easily fixable with such an incredible engineering team such as Tesla uh not enough to just say everyone's fired I I don't think anyone could even come up with a rational reason as as to why this is the case hopefully we'll learn more maybe in an interview or on earnings calls I'm not sure as to why this happened but here's what people are saying in the industry the first thing that hit me hard uh was actually a friend of mine reached out yesterday and I just want to pull it up here and he had mentioned this he works for a utility that supports a lot of infrastructure uh maybe even including this site I don't know probably not and um basically this was just like a dude what the heck is going on and he said this is someone responsible for a lot of high power charging sites from the Utility side a 100% of my contacts at Tesla are gone I emailed everyone this morning and got all bounces we have X number of sites in design and construction and another X number of sites I'm not saying the exact number number in preliminary capacity checks and no one knows who to contact we're talking well over 20 sites here 20 future sites that are already you know the utility has to spend a lot of money to bring power there millions of dollars they're laying out uh in hopes that Tesla will of course and in the trust that Tesla will put in high- power charging stations for them uh he said that's about 20 megaw of supercharging sites in limbo so that's a lot of money that that the utility is putting in and he can't even get anyone to answer he doesn't even know who to call that's one side of it the other side of it I think the one that really screws the industry that is going to lose trust in a lot of automakers is what I received a message from another friend of mine who works hardcore very involved um from the automaker and charging division the what I received from him is it's a big mess the US oems seem to be in shock and some of the Germans are having board discussions to roll back to ccs1 that's crazy that means that the North American charging standard SAE j34 is in question now over automakers complete lack of trust in Tesla and you can't repair this that quickly um the other I'm just going to paraphrase a little bit but basically the Promises of high power version 4 rollout is behind schedule for the other oems and with the team gone no one knows how they can come back on track the 100% J 3400 commitment is certainly gone now we will have to see this is crazy and even more disruptive than the KNX commitment from Ford from a vehicle automaker perspective from a user perspective this may have you know that transition to J 3400 to KNX was amazing and we all pushed super hardcore for it we all put our trust into Tesla we all said you have to support everyone and this is the way forward to make a single standard it's the USBC of charging cars and you know this is what's good for the industry moving forward now it sounds like certainly some companies are just going to walk away from that and of course time will tell a lot of the uh comments now are reactionary this is a big shock but they can't even get phone calls in to people at Tesla that they've been working with so the situation right now is not looking good a lot of new sites are in question a lot of um you know future plans as to what's going to happen with the roll out are completely unknown the strategy for the charging network is certainly unknown other automakers that have committed to KN well that's in question now as well and this is maybe like I mentioned the largest shakeup that I've seen in a long time okay so that's everything that's happened up to this point future predictions speculation what does this mean for the rest of the industry well this is where I'm really curious to see you guys in the comments what's next certainly there are now 500 or 300 or hundreds of people I don't know the exact number a very talented hardworking driven uh you know really passionate about the electric vehicle industry folks that are now out trying to go to get a job on the open market I know many of them and I've already had some conversations with some of them hopefully soon we'll be able to get some on the autospec podcast and not necessarily talk about the letting go but like just what do the industry look like can the charging industry absorb hundreds of people I don't know some people say no other friends of mine I talked to Brandon flash about this quite a bit he says absolutely yes the charging industry needs it um and this might be a good thing to decentralize our nation's charging infrastructure into the future there are some potential positive benefits uh moving forwards there's new charging companies like Iona which um you know we've of course reported on that is the automaker Consortium around building out a high power charging network with thousands of charging ports really going full send I'm sure we're going to see a lot of Tesla people go over to Iona uh perhaps even Hardware manufactures like chemp power altronic uh autel etc etc xcharge name it I'm sure there will be some talented individuals that can go here or there to some spots there are other like install companies that are really great with infrastructure if you guys remember when we covered the Mercedes charging Hub Network that was a Mercedes charge point and &8 collaboration &8 is a fantastic company that is a very skilled at building infrastructure and that is what one of Tesla's key Advantage uh points were they had the people that knew the local Regulators they had the people that knew how to deploy sites look at pre-fabricated supercharger units how quickly they can slap them in the ground really a first for the industry and a lot of those skills will translate to companies like &8 wind Maran owl Services Etc so um ultimately what it means is we now have a bunch of people that are going to flood the industry I'm sure it's not going to be easy for everyone I'm sure th those with the most connections should be okay I'm of course a resource and I ask anyone who has job openings to let me know I will then share that on LinkedIn and social media with the people that I know that are looking for jobs that were let go uh through this one but it's tough and uh you know layoffs happen but I've never seen layoffs happen quite like this right in the middle of right at the beginning of when this was going to become really the star child of Tesla just just to end it all it seems crazy okay so let's talk about the future plans on mentioned they are also going to work on upgrading existing sites now a site like this may make sense to upgrade this is an older version 2 supercharger if you can take a walk with me over here I just want to take a look at the capacity at this site this is the Loveland supercharging site uh local to our house here in Northern Colorado and um let's see what we have going on well we have some switch gear we have the version two cabinets over here and we have a 750 KV VA Transformer now in theory this probably could feed two version 3 supercharging cabinets um which would mean if you rip out all of these 10 stalls you could replace with eight version 3 superchargers plus or minus um because again each cabinet feeds four dispensers the thing is though if they want to upgrade this site it's almost the same process is building a new site they then have to call our local utility who's responsible for the site probably Excel I'm not sure um but then they have to go through and get new Transformers well new Transformers take a long time Excel just lost a lot of trust or I'm not I'm not sure if XL did but I'm sure a lot of utilities lost a lot of trust in Tesla over this if they don't stay up with their commitments to building new sites and are they going to just be like you know what you're now at the bottom of the list for new Transformers and we'll see if we can upgrade you or not because keep in mind most Tesla charging sites are not built with upgradeability in mind they're built for the current amount of stalls that are in there they certainly have done it in past I remember Raleigh had some Provisions for um some expansion but it's pretty rare to see that so which means is if you have an existing site and you're going to upgrade it with either version three or adding more stalls because again a lot of Tesla current locations are amazing but one of the benefits of owning an electric car is there's just more places day by day that you can go um to upgrade a current s it is almost the same process as just building a new one the costs won't be too different yeah you already have a relationship with the folks that you're leasing the land from or maybe Tesla owns the land in some cases but it's not going to be like oh yeah just add a few more Chargers you have to go through and redig rerun conduit upgrade Transformers the exact same process you would have to do for building a new site so I'm not sure I believe that as being like a really good strategic business model going forwards perhaps it will and they can prove me wrong I'm all for more charging and more reliable charging and faster charging whenever possible I think a lot of existing sites are great maybe it's not a bad idea but I still don't fully understand the whole let's just slow down the roll out of the network slowing down the roll out of the network puts distrust in the automakers who have just signed on with Tesla they scrambling right now owners certainly those that are not just you know shareholders or whatever I don't know real owners who drive places who like to go explore there are still many gaps not covered by the supercharger Network there's still long distances long stretches places that need more infrastructure and of course in urban areas there needs to be a ton more infrastructure especially as EVS become more popular with apartment dwellers and condo renters Etc so I'm just confused I'm sure you guys are as well and um you know I hope everyone that was let go finds a good spot and is okay from a Eevee owner's perspective I think we're okay for the time being I don't think we're going to feel the effects of this for another 6 months or a year um something like that that's when we'll really see if this was a good or bad decision it's just uh wild that this is happening now we're going to mostly report on these topics on the out ofp podcast but I had to bring my thoughts to you here in this video so stay tuned to the out ofp podcast thanks for watching this one please let me know in the comments what you guys think because I've received comments on every side of the table here saying this is a great decision all the way to this is confusing and dumb and I don't understand it um that's that's more my side of the boat right now I really don't understand this and it's been the biggest shock to the charging industry in years so thanks so much for watching we'll see you on another one again soon bye-bye

Channel: Out of Spec Reviews

Views: 154,215

Keywords: Car, Review, Acceleration, Braking, POV, Handling, Test, VS, Comparison, Interior, Exterior, Supercar, Hypercar, Sedan, SUV, CUV, TFL, Redline Reviews, Motor1, sports car

Id: iVaViiX0xZY

Length: 20min 21sec (1221 seconds)

Published: Wed May 01 2024