Elon Musk Laid Off Supercharger Team After Taking $17 Million in Federal Charging Grants
Elon Musk Laid Off Supercharger Team After Taking $17 Million in Federal Charging Grants
Despite its CEO railing against Biden, Tesla was more than happy to take the administration's money.
Despite its CEO railing against Biden, Tesla was more than happy to take the administration's money.
Stealing this from a comment on the restera threaad
Internally employees left at Tesla are calling this the "Snap". My friend was building over 10 new sites and breaking ground on 3 others. Contractors are getting fucked and have no one to contact. Overnight 100's of sites with 100's of contractors, design companies and suppliers working on them are just in limbo with not a single person from Tesla reaching out to them and their contact laid off. Lots of layoffs are going to be tied to this.
Not only does this affect the building of new sites there's now not a single employee that can perform maintenance at any of these locations.
This is going to cascade across many companies and industries. Because this is basically taking a massive infrastructure effort and suddenly cutting off the management and production of specialized hardware.
And, tinfoil, but this very much feels like an attempt to steal the election for republicans. Because this is going to impact the infrastructure efforts of the Biden administration AND cause a lot of layoffs among blue collar workers when they can't send invoices or get paid because everyone they knew got fired. And you can bet there will be a social media shitstorm over "Biden is trying to steal money from my company" if there is any attempt to recoup the money that is being put into a giant reward package for musk.
And, tinfoil, but this very much feels like an attempt to steal the election for republicans. Because this is going to impact the infrastructure efforts of the Biden administration AND cause a lot of layoffs among blue collar workers when they can’t send invoices or get paid because everyone they knew got fired.
There was a time when I could have thought that level of calculation of Musk. That time is long since gone. His mouth cost him $44 billion when he was forced to buy twitter because of his edgy comments online. Musk's recent comments about the firings were his version of the criteria of "excellent, necessary, and trustworthy" and did not, apparently include the entire Supercharger team. Any outside observer would say the Supercharger team is absolutely "excellent, necessary, and trustworthy".
This latest action by Musk just reeks like a mania episode with a good dose of paranoia mixed it. I don't think it has anything to do with the election.
I was holding stock specifically to be able to vote Musk out, but this latest move was the last straw. I sold what I had after the announcement yesterday. Its already down $5/share lower than when I sold mine yesterday.
Yeah a lot of recent musk has seemed like a manic state and paranoia. He's reported to have been doing a lot more drugs lately. So that would probably make sense
Imagine taking your most strategic asset, and an industry leading product, then doing this to it.
Musk is this generation’s Howard Hughes. He was always eccentric and weird, but he’s aggressively sliding into his compulsions like Hughes did.
Hughes ended up locked away, in a dark penthouse, getting yearly fingernail cuts, with a collection of urine filled bottles.
So you’re saying there’s a chance he’s just gonna disappear one day. DON’T YOU TOY WITH MY EMOTIONS IF YOU DON’T REALLY MEAN IT!!
I thought Bezos was the piss bottle guy.
Bezos distributes them to employees, but I'm not aware of him using them himself
Hughes was the OG rich pee bottle guy.
He’s another Trump. Musk may have money but he has no idea how to spend it.
Just like trumps ventures they all failed because he’s a shmuck with zero business clue.
Inherited mommy and daddy’s money but pisses it all away on shit ideas and terrible execution.
Soon we’ll hear musk is broke because he spent it all on shit he can’t handle.
He seems to have gotten a lot worse lately, obviously he's always been a jackass and narcissistic. But up until recently most of his business decisions have been mostly rational. From the accounts I've read he has gotten rid of most of if not all of his competent advisors and has been doing a lot more drugs. I think what we are seeing here is an extended manic state, brought on by a lack of stability/stress, some underlying psychological issues, and a whole bunch of drugs.
Oh and just in case people think I'm defending him. I hate that fucker. I just think it is much more complicated than simple incompetency.
He is broke. He spent his money on a website, immediately crash and burned it, and interestingly wants the purchase value back as pay from Tesla's board.
This shit don't pay for itself
I said somewhere that I believe Tesla as a csr manufacturer is fucked but they light pivot into being a charging company and battery provider, it seems big brain musket is hellbent on ruining the good parts of his company too
Nah, Musk is an incompetent idiot who got incredibly lucky and managed to fail upwards. He's not eccentric, he's just an asshole
This is why I fucking hate government grants to corporations. These assholes never put in safeguards to actually force these jackass companies to actually use it as intended.
I'm OK with grants for certain things/times/whatever. But it seems like if the owner is worth billions and comes to the gov't for a handout, the gov't should just tax them correctly and say,"No you."
Infrastructure should be public anyways, so instead of giving grants to private for profit companies, it would instead use that money to just fund the infrastructure.
Government grants should come with government share % of the company.
Or at least with heavy requirements and obligations like every government "grant" for normals people.
Oh I think it’s all going how it was intended. Just not going according to the public justification.
Although I understand the sentiment, the instrument under which the funding has been granted is called NEVI and has pretty strict requirements about what gets built (150kW rated, payment terminal equipped charging stations along major roads) as well as transparency requirements about reliability.
Maybe the Fed should take the money back
Feels like they should, I'm not exactly thrilled by the idea of my tax dollars going into Musk's pocket just for the hell of it
Incredibly speculative, but this could also be Elon’s Saudi investors’ plan to blow up the EV market in America. If the charging infrastructure becomes unreliable, it kills the entire market.
The “Boring Company” killed light rail in several cities with empty promises. The Saudis bailed out his purchase of Twitter once.
Again speculative, but Elon and the Saudis working together checks a lot of boxes.
I doubt it actually. My guess is they got the tesla charger adopted for all US electric cars, so now they can just be greedy and have others build infrastructure instead of them. They can invest nothing and still get chargers made for them now. Why would we expect Tesla to continue spending money now?
The big oil corporations have been busy buying up all the competing charging networks, so that much tracks.
This explains so much and feels like an anti trust monitor should be assigned.
Such a "clever businessman." Embezelling $17 million in taxpayer dollars to enrich himself.
Which, even if it went directly into his pocket, doesn't even move the needle for him.
Like another poster said, his goals are more likely politically aligned. He wants EV infrastructure to fail to show libtards are squandering tax money. Self fulfilling prophecy and all that.
Why the tesla board hasn't sent him packing yet is beyond me. There must be some golden parachute clause that would be very expensive, but he's doing massive harm to their brand that it must be worth it to cut him loose at this point.
Edit - I also think this ego maniac is sabotaging his own charging infrastructure simply because the government passed a bill (IIRC) that requires the charging stations be accessible to any EV. Not that it needs to provide the connectors on-site - other EV drivers will need to bring their own adapters. Simply that the payment system allows non-tesla owners to use it.
Why the tesla board hasn’t sent him packing yet is beyond me. There must be some golden parachute clause that would be very expensive, but he’s doing massive harm to their brand that it must be worth it to cut him loose at this point.
He's stacked the board with his friends and family. They're not going to raise the chance of it themselves.
Our only chance is/was actions by activist investors. I suppose I would have been considered one of those until yesterday when I sold.
Why the tesla board hasn’t sent him packing yet is beyond me.
His board is full of friends, family, and other sycophants.
Shareholders won't vote Elon out because he is sadly the one reason its so highly valued, and if he goes, the stock price does with it. They won't do anything until the company is on fire, and its not yet.
Given that yesterday's layoff news did nothing to the stock price, we're getting there.
Rumor has it that this is a temper tantrum after a competitor unveiled 10 minute charging technology.
Seriously... If that's true this may be the dumbest temper tantrum Elon has had yet and there are a lot of competing temper tantrums.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/first-ev-10-minute-charge/ar-AA1o03Fw
https://www.pcmag.com/news/toyota-touts-solid-state-evs-with-932-mile-range-10-minute-charging-by
I did not know about the leaps in charging they've been making. Thank you.
Yeah it's impressive. When this infrastructure is built-out to where I'm at 30 years from now, if I'm still alive, I might get an EV.
sounds like D'Elon the Musketeer
This shit can destroy companies and tank its value
Leaving hundreds of contacts in limbo with no resolution has the potential to cost more than $17 million in legal fees and termination clauses.
Where the fuck is the board of directors and why are none of the shareholders revolting?
To give you an idea of who is on the tesla board of directors, it includes Kimbal Musk, his brother, and James Murdoch, of the Murdoch family you’re probably thinking of. Musk himself owns something like 20% of the company, the board owns some, his cult members also have some share. The rest of the shareholders are either institutional or retail investors who are some combination of not willing to rock the boat, don’t have enough voting power, and/or just don’t care.
We the shareholders trust Musk completely. He is, after all, a genius.
Nah, I’m playing! Only thing I ever had shares of was the ex wife, and I wasn’t even aware she was publicly traded until I accidentally dropped in on a shareholder meeting. I gave mine away. :p
Such a genius move. Us ordinary minds cannot comprehend this.
Trickle down economics should result in more jobs. In this case it didn't. The lesson is that not enough subsidy was given because people were fired instead of hired. Suggest they give Musk more money, that should get the desired result! /s
Trickle down economics should result in more jobs.
In the mythical land of conservative wish fulfillment, sure. In reality trickle down economics was always a lie to justify tax breaks for the wealthy.
The solution is always more tax cuts for the rich!
I'm HAPPY my Tax Dollars went to Laying People Off INSTEAD of feeding Starving American Children!
Musk is such a welfare queen.
Had a friend turn down 4 internships when they got one at Tesla, and now, just as the summers coming up, they recinded a bunch of internship offers.
But they’re crazy, after all that’s gone down w Elon they just bought a Model 3
Why can't we seize this cunt's assets? He plays states, the Fed.. wtf?
We can. It’s just that the cunts who have the ability to do so are butt buddies with him.
You can insult the person and his cronies without resorting to homophobic shit like that.
No executive deserves the kind of money and power he is demanding. The workers deserve it. Executive positions must become democratically elected from within the workforce, exclusively, modestly compensated, with checks and balances, for limited terms representing the company workforce.
This is our world he's fucking with.
I haven’t seen anyone actually describe what this “team” is.
Tesla’s PR teams said that they’re still expanding the network, but at a slower pace. If that’s the case, I assume this mostly guts the product and program management folks, and the goal is to consolidate this department with a related department.
Does anyone actually have details about the full scope of layoffs and the scope of who remains?
The entire charging team is gone, not a single person remains to even issue a repair order...
That's the crazy thing. He is letting the entire division go instead of just replacing the head he might have had a problem with. So now the good workers and the bad workers if there are such, are all being flushed out of the Tesla toilet.
Yikes.
From up thread if you haven't seen it:
Internally employees left at Tesla are calling this the "Snap". My friend was building over 10 new sites and breaking ground on 3 others. Contractors are getting fucked and have no one to contact. Overnight 100's of sites with 100's of contractors, design companies and suppliers working on them are just in limbo with not a single person from Tesla reaching out to them and their contact laid off. Lots of layoffs are going to be tied to this.
Not only does this affect the building of new sites there's now not a single employee that can perform maintenance at any of these locations.
To the surprise of literally no one.
There are two things Tesla and Elon has done well. Making EVs mainstream and cool. And the super charger network. Everything else. Bleh
Who cares it's boring stop posting it
Boring is a different Musk company
There's other headlines you can read