Superchargers in Australia

[Quickst]

We don't want every manufacturer to build their own separate charging network

Why not?. We seem happy for all sorts of charging vendors installing their own DCFC network. Not happy when Tesla slows down its DCFC buildout but give everyone else a pass seem hypocritical to me.

high standards?. Make a start and let's see the standards. At the moment they are not even building one (they = other EV manufacturers)

 

[Astro66]

With the China meeting last week. What's the bet all supercharging manufacturing is moved from NY to China ? I don't see it impacting Australia.

 

[Jules22]

With the China meeting last week. What's the bet all supercharging manufacturing is moved from NY to China ? I don't see it impacting Australia.

I think they already were, so as usual likely to be another storm in a tea cup that the sky is falling crowd fall for every time.

 

[RichardV]

According to Electrek they are already pulling back out of new SC plans in NY.

Tesla is already pulling back Supercharger plans after firing team

Tesla is already pulling back Supercharger plans after Elon Musk came in like a wrecking ball and fired the whole...

electrek.co

Fact check is required obviously, as always correlation does not mean causation. There might be new better locations, we'll see - and I'm unsure how this impacts AU as well.

The underlying story here that Elon has dissolved the tesla supercharging group seems to check out.
Just have a look around on LinkedIn on all the now former Tesla employees posting about it. And this is obviously through a professional lens were they are putting their best professional foot forward.

There are also reports of contractors and utilities no longer being able to contact their Tesla contacts.

This looks nothing like an orderly process of down sizing the charging team. Not sure how Elon even expects to finish up existing installs if there is no one left to co-ordinate with.
And if you want to go for speculation as to what might have occured this is a somewhat worrying report,

Rebecca being,

 

[moa999]

It certainly seems a crazy decision, particularly as the unit was profitable and designed as such per Elons tweets, and a major reason why people buy Tesla's and with their party charging other EVs.

Massive loss in corporate knowledge and contacts on projects that are often years in the making. And I think will undoubtedly cause a hiccup in rollout when EV sales are increasing.

If Elon was looking for a way to encourage Tesla owners and shareholders to vote for his reinstated compensation package, he couldn't have made a worse decision.

 

[SPadival]

It’s not a big secret If you have read Walter Issaacson’s authorised biography of Elon, where he talks about Elon’s “Demon” mode.

The same process has happened 3 times before - Recently when he fired 80% of Twitter
- when he announced the closure of all Tesla showrooms/galleries & move to an online only sales model.
- When he fired the Starlink satellite team.

Everyone at the time announced that the sky was falling.

He probably has a skeletal staff and he’ll rehire the people who are committed/dedicated/crazy enough to come back.

 

[Quickst]

It certainly seems a crazy decision

The comment by the ex employee that Rocketman went nuclear with the head of charging pushed back against reducing headcount sounds like the most likely scenario (in conjunction with his subsequent tweet that he would do similar to execs who don't tow the line)

He has gone nuclear before, so lets see whats going to happen in the next few weeks.

 

[karlos22]

Worrying for Australia, we desperately need more stalls over here especially with the recent surge in Tesla sales. If they don't keep building new sites or adding stalls at a high rate, I wouldn't bother driving my Tesla anywhere on the east coast motorways during the holidays.

 

[dronus]

Worrying for Australia, we desperately need more stalls over here especially with the recent surge in Tesla sales. If they don't keep building new sites or adding stalls at a high rate, I wouldn't bother driving my Tesla anywhere on the east coast motorways during the holidays.

Hopefully someone asks the question:

Why isn’t any other EV manufacturer building charging infrastructure?

 

[Baymax44]

btw, I also believe as other service providers like BP are purchasing superchargers from Tesla for their charging network, Tesla can still earn by selling the charging solution.,

 

[cafz]

Having been on the Tesla train for 4 and a half years, probably the best thing about it has been the company's commitment to charging infrastructure. I've had friends who've bought other EVs go on their first long distance trip then say "maybe we should have bought a Tesla after all". So to me this feels like an epic in the dummy-spit-nose-cut-face-spiting genre.

 

[Vostok]

Why isn’t any other EV manufacturer building charging infrastructure?

There’s a big difference between nuking a very successful part of your business that generated a lot of goodwill and positive brand sentiment, and not doing any of that in the first place.

As @Chuq stated, Tesla had to build the SC network as an integral part of their business, otherwise the whole would not have succeeded. Over time, it became entrenched as one of the key value-add reasons one bought a Tesla. Elon killing it off really is deranged behaviour.

A normal CEO, if they had an issue with one of their Executives apparently defying them, would just sack the executive concerned. A petulant response still, but vaguely defendable. But having a toddler tantrum and sacking that Executive and her entire division in order to make an “example” of them is absolutely not defendable. It’s totally unhinged behaviour.

Other companies never built their own charging networks, because they were conflicted about EVs from the start (trying to protect ICE revenues) and the EVs they did make lost money - so they never had the capital resources or appetite to increase their EV-related exposure.

For those companies, every dollar they spent on a charging network is a dollar they would have not spent on their EVs to make them better and grab more market share. I’d much rather them focus on that. Also, by the time most of them became reasonably serious about EVs, substantial third party charging networks were ramping up and reaching scale, making it far less necessary for them to start building their own.

 

[Quickst]

desperately need more stalls

Why ask only Tesla

. I’d much rather them focus on that.

So there should be no angst if Tesla reduces the SC buildout rate or even stop it. Many places to redeploy capital. I don't buy the other companies are not as invested in EV as a reason for not building a single DCFC. Its a lame excuse

 

[Jules22]

Still so much angst and jumping to conclusions based on nothing more than rumour and speculation.

 

[SPadival]

I wouldn't bother driving my Tesla anywhere on the east coast motorways during the holidays

Elon Musk said Tesla will focus on "expansion of existing locations", which is exactly what is required to handle peak demand during the holidays.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1785406795814510785

We were spoilt for choice on where to supercharge on the Melbourne-Sydney route. Some of the SCs will be under-utilised because unless you manually add them as a stop, the nav will simply skip them by default (for example, Exeter SC) because the nav is optimised to reach a lower charging % that will deliver faster charging speed under the charging curve. Also, most of the SCs only ever get full during the long weekend. So a solution would be to setup temporary SCs during the long weekend or expand existing SCs for peak demand. Seems they are opting for the latter.

 

[dronus]

There’s a big difference between nuking a very successful part of your business that generated a lot of goodwill and positive brand sentiment, and not doing any of that in the first place.

As @Chuq stated, Tesla had to build the SC network as an integral part of their business, otherwise the whole would not have succeeded. Over time, it became entrenched as one of the key value-add reasons one bought a Tesla. Elon killing it off really is deranged behaviour.

A normal CEO, if they had an issue with one of their Executives apparently defying them, would just sack the executive concerned. A petulant response still, but vaguely defendable. But having a toddler tantrum and sacking that Executive and her entire division in order to make an “example” of them is absolutely not defendable. It’s totally unhinged behaviour.

Other companies never built their own charging networks, because they were conflicted about EVs from the start (trying to protect ICE revenues) and the EVs they did make lost money - so they never had the capital resources or appetite to increase their EV-related exposure.

For those companies, every dollar they spent on a charging network is a dollar they would have not spent on their EVs to make them better and grab more market share. I’d much rather them focus on that. Also, by the time most of them became reasonably serious about EVs, substantial third party charging networks were ramping up and reaching scale, making it far less necessary for them to start building their own.

Are they killing it off though?

Or are they slowing down building new sites and focussing on upgrading existing sites.

 

[moa999]

Elon Musk said Tesla will focus on "expansion of existing locations", which is exactly what is required to handle peak demand during the holidays.

All of which still requires a charging team doing most of the same thing.
Negotiating with site owner, electricity providers, managing contractors etc.

And in many cases increasing the amount of power might be expensive or time consuming, or a site owner might not be willing to give up more of their carpark.

 

[dronus]

Elon Musk said Tesla will focus on "expansion of existing locations", which is exactly what is required to handle peak demand during the holidays.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1785406795814510785

We were spoilt for choice on where to supercharge on the Melbourne-Sydney route. Some of the SCs will be under-utilised because unless you manually add them as a stop, the nav will simply skip them by default (for example, Exeter SC) because the nav is optimised to reach a lower charging % that will deliver faster charging speed under the charging curve. Also, most of the SCs only ever get full during the long weekend. So a solution would be to setup temporary SCs during the long weekend or expand existing SCs for peak demand. Seems they are opting for the latter.

This is what I’ve been reading too.

 

[dronus]

All of which still requires a charging team doing most of the same thing.
Negotiating with site owner, electricity providers, managing contractors etc.

And in many cases increasing the amount of power might be expensive or time consuming, or a site owner might not be willing to give up more of their carpark.

I also heard there was a conflict with the person in charge of this area.

There’s likely more to this story that will come out

The people let go are saying there is a shortage in skilled people in their industry so hopefully they get jobs there

 

[SPadival]

All of which still requires a charging team doing most of the same thing.
Negotiating with site owner, electricity providers, managing contractors etc.

Elon has fired an entire team of literal rocket scientists (working on Starlink) and yet managed to launch thousands of satellites into space a year later. No disrespect to electrical engineers and PMs, but they should be easier to hire/re-hire in comparison.