Tesla lays off hundreds of employees on electric vehicle charger team
May 1 (UPI) -- Tesla laid off hundreds of employees on its Supercharger team, casting doubt over the project that provides electric vehicle charging for multiple manufacturesrs.
While Tesla has not given much information about the layoffs, Tesla employees took to social media on Tuesday about the layoffs, including X, which is owned by Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
"Confirmed -- Tesla, Elon Musk [have] let go of our entire charging organization go," William Navarro Jameson, a strategic charging programs lead at Tesla said on X. "What this means for the charging network, NACS and all the exciting work we were doing across the industry, I don't yet know. What a wild ride it has been."
Musk posted on X that his company was not walking away from its Supercharger network with the layoffs.
"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," he said.
It is believed that about 500 employees were laid off from the critical Supercharger team. It had been thought that Tesla was in the process of boosting its Supercharger unit after a deal with Ford and General Motors allowing its vehicles to charge on the network.
Tesla's stocks tumbled almost 6% on Tuesday after the news broke about the supercharger team.
The cuts are a continuation of cuts Musk promised last month when he told employees that he would slash payroll by 10% in an effort to slim down the EV giant.