- Tesla laid off its entire Supercharger team recently of roughly 500 people.
- It also received a $17 million federal grant to build additional charging infrastructure.
- Now, it might have to rehire some of that team to fulfill its obligations.
Tesla is in the midst of several big shifts and part of the seismic activity is laying off around 10 percent of its workforce. Recently, the automaker let go of approximately 500 employees from the Supercharger charging network team.
However, due to the necessity of maintaining the network and fulfilling obligations resulting from a $17 million federal grant, Tesla may now need to reconsider and rehire some of those individuals.
At the time of the layoffs, CEO Elon Musk said on X that “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.”
More: Tesla Exodus Continues As Top HR Exec Leaves After Brutal Job Cuts
In response to a reply about one specific Supercharger station in that same thread, Musk said “It’s definitely going to open. Sites under construction will be completed and we will add additional Superchargers anywhere where there are gaps.” On top of that, Tesla has secured $17 million in grants to complete additional charging stations, says Politico. Again though, how the team at Tesla will accomplish that without employees is up for debate.
According to Bloomberg, the automaker is already in talks to rehire several people on the Supercharger team. That would appear to be the only way, outside of hiring all new employees or contracting out the work, for Tesla to meet both its obligation to create additional infrastructure but also to keep its own network up and running.
Interestingly, Tesla appears to be giving the government a good deal for its $17 million, provided that it actually builds the stations in a timely fashion. That dollar amount accounts for just 13 percent of the total grants given out and sets up Tesla to build 41 stations, as highlighted by Gizmodo.
Francis Energy, another charging infrastructure company, also won cash from the government in the amount of $30.4 million. It’s planning to make just 37 stations with that money. Again though, the value Tesla provides hinges on whether or not it has the staff and bandwidth to do the job.
We’ve reached out to Tesla for clarification on the situation, but as it doesn’t have a public relations department, we’ll likely see all 41 of those charging stations built before it gets back to us.
