ALBAWABA – Following multiple streaks of layoffs that lasted weeks, A number of the nearly 500 employees of Tesla's Supercharging team that CEO Elon Musk fired late last month have started to be hired back, according to a Bloomberg report.
Earlier this month, it was reported by multiple news outlets that the entirety of Tesla’s Supercharger division team had been laid off as the company grapples with strong competition in the EV industry.
Max de Zegher, the North American director of charging, is the most prominent employee that has returned to the company in place of Rebecca Tinucci, the senior director that Musk sacked a few weeks ago along with almost every other member of the charging department.
Unquestionably, Tesla's greatest asset is its Supercharger network. During the course of the previous year, almost every major US carmaker that sells or intends to sell electric vehicles indicated that it would abandon the CCS1 connection in favor of the J3400 standard, developed by Tesla, arsTechnica notes, with OEMs announcing every time that it had arranged for its clients to have access to the Supercharger network.
The number of laid-off employees who have since been rehired is still unknown, but Musk's decision to dissolve the team shocked the whole electric car industry since Superchargers have been perhaps Tesla's most considerate product, debuting in 2012 not long after the automaker began manufacturing the Model S vehicle, the carmaker now runs over 6,200 stations and 57,000 connections worldwide.
Model 3 and other Teslas charge at the SuperCharger staion in Beulton, CA (Shutterstock)
Musk promised last week to invest more than $500 million in expanding Tesla's network this year in response to strong backlash. A few days before, the CEO said that the firm will prioritize uptime and current locations while gradually adding chargers at a slower pace.
“Since 2012, Charging has been a pillar of Tesla's mission, providing dependable freedom to travel,” Tesla said in a statement on X (formerly Twitter), adding that “Supercharging is the largest network globally, with the highest capital + operational efficiency, and we will continue to sustain & grow the network.”
