Now that every automaker has committed to the SAE J3400 charging connector (also knows as the NACS or Tesla connector), Tesla CEO Elon Musk has terminated the executive in charge of the Supercharger business.
Rebecca Tinucci has been terminated, according to Reuters, along with Daniel Ho, who is responsible for Tesla’s new vehicles program.
Musk is also expected to eliminate all the positions that reported to either one of these executives. Which, again, is baffling because the Supercharger network is about to become much more popular as every EV driver will have access to the network.
“Hopefully these actions are making it clear that we need to be absolutely hard core about head count and cost reduction,” Musk wrote in the email, the report said. Musk then accuses the executives let go of not taking this objective seriously.
Despite some apparent wins for the company, including Tesla partnering with Baidu in China to get the company’s driver-assistance software enabled there, Tesla did have an abysmal first quarter of sales and it appears the government is going to continue to look into deaths related to Tesla’s driver-assistance software.
Maybe the company is overstaffed, but it seems strange that the crown jewel of Tesla — the Supercharger network — is something that Musk doesn’t appear to value, especially when that network is becoming more and more important.
Of course, just because automakers have access to the Supercharger network by licensing the J3400 connector doesn’t mean drivers won’t be able to charge elsewhere, but the whole point of Tesla opening the network up was to gain access to government infrastructure funds and help increase EV adoption. We’re not sure how you do that when you don’t have a team responsible for it.
At the time of this article’s publication, Tesla’s stock is slightly down.
