Tesla reportedly has begun hiring back some of the almost 500 members of its Supercharging team chief executive officer Elon Musk dismissed late last month.
According to Bloomberg sources, chief among the personnel who had returned was Max de Zegher, the director of charging for North America. De Zegher was one of the top managers after Rebecca Tinucci, the senior director Musk fired late last month along with virtually everyone else in the charging group.
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The report said it wasn’t immediately clear how many laid off workers had been rehired. Musk and de Zegher didn’t respond to Bloomberg messages seeking comment.
Bloomberg noted Musk’s dissolution of the team had stunned the broader electric vehicle sector, as Superchargers arguably had been Tesla’s shrewdest product. In the past year, the company convinced competitors to embrace its plugs as an industry standard and signed agreements with many of the world’s biggest manufacturers to open its network to their customers.
After widespread blowback, Musk pledged last week to spend “well over” $500 million on growing Tesla’s network this year. Days earlier, the CEO had said the company planned to add chargers at a slower pace and focus more on uptime and existing locations.
Bloomberg noted the @TeslaCharging account on X followed up Musk on 10 May with a post thanking charging site hosts and suppliers for their patience with the company amid its internal restructuring. De Zegher had reposted the message.
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By GlobalDataThe report noted Musk had walked back impulsive cost cutting measures before. In 2019, he announced Tesla was going to close most of its stores and shift sales online, blindsiding much of his sales team. Ten days later, after landlords refused to let the company out of its leases, the CEO backtracked and raised vehicle prices.
A similar situation played out at Twitter in late 2022: Soon after Musk laid off roughly half the company, dozens of employees were asked to return, Bloomberg added.
The report said Tesla unveiled its first Superchargers in September 2012, shortly after the carmaker started producing the Model S sedan. The company now had more than 6,200 stations and 57,000 connectors worldwide.
