Tesla shocked just about everybody by laying off the entire team responsible for its Superchargers, considered one of Tesla’s greatest successes and top assets. According to Musk, they will greatly slow expansion, and focus on reliability. Reports suggest leases for some new charging stations are already cancelled.
One has to wonder if the executives at all the companies who just cut deals to switch their cars from CCS to NACS and get access to Tesla’s network are a bit miffed that that network is not going to be what they expected. , Tesla got only 17% of them. That’s a paltry number when you consider that Tesla sells more EVs than all other makers combined, and it was 80% just 5 years ago. It’s even worse when you consider that Tesla makes stalls for a small fraction of the cost of other bidders, and these new stations support all cars. Based on data from Texas, Tesla’s cost per stall is less than 25% of other vendors, due to their skill and economies of scale.
Another thing to understand about charging not being a business is that it’s not selling energy as a commodity like a gas station does. It sells charging as a service. The same electricity through fast charging might cost 50 cents/kwH and 15 cents via slow charging. Imagine if some gas stations were $5/gallon and some were $2! It’s really entirely different and poorly understood by many of those in the game.