Tesla Lays Off Entire Supercharger Team as Musk Talks About the Future of Superchargers

Tesla Supercharging

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Tesla chief executive Elon Musk emailed the company’s executives informing them about further layoffs including Supercharging, Public Policy and New Product Iteration teams. The reductions come in addition to the more than 10 percent staff cut announced two weeks ago.

In an email seen by The Information, Musk stated that the company needs “to be absolutely hardcore about headcount and cost reduction”.

“Starting at 10 AM EST Tuesday, I will ask for the resignation of any executive who retains more than three people who don’t obviously pass the excellent, necessary, and trustworthy test,” the Tesla CEO wrote.

Musk Talks About the Future of Superchargers

Tesla recently reached 50,000 Superchargers globally and marked the occasion with a special edition Supercharger. Superchargers are the world's most reliable, fast-charging network, partly due to Tesla’s real-time monitoring. As Tesla has recently started opening its Supercharging network to other automakers, the move to axe the entire Supercharger team caused perplexity among investors and customers.

On X, Musk commented on the concerns a few hours later saying Tesla still plans to grow the Supercharger network, "just at a slower pace for new locations”. The company will instead focus on “100% uptime and expansion of existing locations,” he added.

This statement is particularly odd given that Tesla’s Superchargers are already highly reliable with more than a 99% uptime. However, depending on your region, some charging locations can become rather congested, and this will likely worsen as more vehicles come equipped with NACS ports and get access to the Supercharger network.

Rivian recently announced that it will open up its much smaller network of fast chargers to Tesla and other EVs. This may help fill in some gaps, especially since Rivian tends to focus on more rural areas.

Tesla still plans to grow the Supercharger network, just at a slower pace for new locations and more focus on 100% uptime and expansion of existing locations

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 30, 2024

William Jameson, strategic charging programs lead at Tesla, confirmed on X that Musk had let the "entire charging org go”. Later on, Musk disclosed that all the sites that are currently under construction “will be completed, ” including the highly anticipated Hollywood Diner. There’s also a new Supercharger planned that will be New England’s largest and include a solar CyberCanopy.

Musk added that Tesla will add “additional Superchargers anywhere where there are gaps,” although as he previously said, it will be at a much slower rate than before.

Tesla announced the first generation of Superchargers in September 2012 with the first 6 locations in the US while expansion to Europe and Asia arrived in mid-2013.

Open of Supercharging Network

In May 2023, Ford announced that it became the first automaker to gain access to Tesla Superchargers across the U.S. and Canada. Less than two weeks later, GM CEO Mary Barra said in an X Spaces with Elon Musk, that GM customers would also access more than 12,000 Tesla Superchargers in North America.

Major automakers such as Volvo, Mercedes, and Honda plus EV startups including Rivian and Polestar have followed over the next months bringing up the number to 20.

Further Teams Affected 

Daniel Ho, Director of Vehicle Programs and New Product Introduction (NPI), has also left the company, along with the entire public policy team previously under Rohan Patel, former Vice President for Public Policy and Business Development.

At the time, Patel said on X that Tesla has “the best policy/biz-dev team in the business” while thanking Elon Musk for “empowering” to “lead big initiatives at the company”.

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Tesla Adds Ability to Swipe Left and Right in Browser

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Tesla has made a spate of improvements to its vehicle software recently, starting with the big Spring Update, and then the Summer Update more recently. While we see most of the updates mentioned in the release notes, Tesla often also adds smaller quality-of-life improvements along the way.

Browser Controls

When using the Tesla Browser in the vehicle, you can now swipe left and right to go back or forward a page in your browser history. When you start swiping on the screen, Tesla’s Chromium-based browser will now display an arrow that slides out from the left or right. The circular icon is initially white, meaning that the action won’t be executed, but if you continue moving to the left/right, the icon will eventually turn blue. The blue icon means that the action will be executed once you let go of the screen.

This is a simple quality-of-life improvement that makes using the built-in browser easier.

We’re happy to see updates like these come to the browser, whose last major feature was the full-screen button that was added in update 2024.14.

Future Browser Improvements

While we’re on the topic, let’s look at some future Tesla web browser improvements we’d love to see.

Access to the Mic

Full access to the vehicle microphone isn’t allowed through the web browser right now. That means if you want to get into a Discord, Slack, or Teams call, you’ll only be able to listen – not speak. All of these apps fully function in the Tesla browser for sending messages, but are fairly limited for meetings.

Better Bookmarks

Tesla’s current bookmark system is simple and barebones. You can bookmark a page and give it a name. Once you visit a bookmarked page enough, it’ll show up as an icon in the center of the browser when you go to the homepage.

However, it's difficult to keep a larger set of bookmarks since there aren’t any organizational tools provided. A better bookmark system or the ability to sync bookmarks would be a welcomed feature.

Custom Homepage

Tesla’s current homepage in its browser is simply just a Tesla logo in black or white, depending on whether your car is in dark mode or not. A custom homepage that provides widgets with basic local news, stock information or other details would be fantastic. We’d ask for weather too, but the recent Summer update shows weather at the top of your screen.

If you’ve got more ideas for the fairly barebones Tesla web browser, let us know.

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Tesla Updates FSD Package, Can Now Only Buy FSD Supervised

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Tesla has changed how they advertise and sell Full Self-Driving on their website. Although the text changes are small, this change could have greater implications in the future.

Previously, customers were offered the option to purchase “Full Self-Driving Capability,” with text saying that FSD will “continuously improve”. This specific text is no longer offered, and instead, customers can now only purchase “Full Self Driving (Supervised),” which no longer mentions continuous improvement.

You can view the old text on the Web Archive page (photo below) for the Model Y. This change comes right before the upcoming Robotaxi event, so we’re not quite sure what to make of it. Let’s look at what else has changed on Tesla’s website on FSD before we dive into the wording changes.

This news comes hot on the heels that Tesla recently pulled its blog pages for Elon Musk’s Masterplan Part II, which mentioned that all future Tesla vehicles would be Robotaxi capable. However, this has since turned out to be part of regular website trimming and maintenance. However, this FSD change is more intentional.

The previous FSD option you could buy from Tesla (left), and the new one (right)

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Definition Changes

These text changes are pretty broad, but that’s not all. There are a few other items that changed, including the removal of the following text:

The activation and use of these features are dependent on achieving reliability far in excess of human drivers as demonstrated by billions of miles of experience, as well as regulatory approval, which may take longer in some jurisdictions. As these self-driving features evolve, your car will be continuously upgraded through over-the-air software updates.

This has now been changed to say:

The activation and use of these features are dependent on development and regulatory approval, which may take longer in some jurisdictions.

That’s a pretty big difference overall, so let’s dig in.

Can Only Buy FSD (Supervised)

Tesla is now only offering the purchase of “Full Self-Driving (Supervised)”, instead of “Full Self-Driving Capability." This has a bit of an implication for the many people who have paid for FSD in the past, expecting their vehicles to become fully autonomous, without supervision being required. With the specific terms on Tesla’s website today, that promise doesn’t seem to be in place for future sales of Full Self-Driving.

Instead, future customers should expect that they may only receive Full Self-Driving (Supervised), which will always require some form of supervision. Tesla no longer states full autonomy on this page, but on the other hand, the Autopilot/FSD Support Page still contains the text for full autonomy.

This seems to be a legal wording change to prevent Tesla from making promises it may not be able to fulfill. On the other hand, Tesla has recently had a fantastic spate of updates this year, with the huge upgrade from FSD V11 to FSD V12. However, they’ve more recently had more trouble with moving on from FSD V12.3.6, which is what most vehicles are still on today. Tesla initially pushed FSD V12.4 and its subversions to early access testers but quickly halted that push. They moved on to FSD V12.5, and V12.5.3 with Actually Smart Summon will begin going out wide sometime next week, to both Hardware 3 and AI4 vehicles.

What Does This Mean for Customers?

For future customers, this likely means that Tesla is intending on only offering Full Self Driving (Supervised), rather than Full Self Driving. This could mean that Tesla will launch a new package for Full Self Driving (Unsupervised) for commercial entities or that it could only be available for Robotaxi vehicles.

For older customers – those who have purchased “Full Self-Driving Capability”, as the feature was previously called, we’re not quite sure whether Tesla will include you in this new ‘Supervised’ description, or if you’ll be offered Full Self-Driving (Unsupervised) when that ultimately becomes available. As for subscribers, Tesla can change their offerings at any point since you’re only paying for what’s available for that month.

Today, we’re not quite sure what to make of this change, especially since that same change hasn’t been reciprocated elsewhere on Tesla’s website. The changes could be anywhere from a protective legal change, to Tesla offering a new FSD (Unsupervised) package in the future, or fully autonomous FSD being something that Tesla will not commit a date or price to.

Let us know what you think in the forums.

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