Tesla lays off Supercharger, new model launch teams – report

US electric-car giant Tesla has fired the teams behind new-model launches and Supercharger stations – amounting to more than 500 staff, plus two top executives, including an Australian – amid slowing sales and declining profit margins, a new report claims.

Website The Information claims it has seen an internal email from Elon Musk to senior Tesla executives advising of the departure of Rebecca Tinucci, senior director of charging, and Daniel Ho, director of 'Vehicle Programs and New Product Introduction'.

The report claims every employee working for Ms Tinucci and Mr Ho will be dismissed, said to include about 500 staff in the Supercharger team, and an undisclosed number working for Mr Ho.

Both executives are veterans of the company, according to their LinkedIn pages, with Ms Tinucci having been the US car giant for more than six years.

Mr Ho has worked for Tesla for more than a decade, after 12 years with Ford Australia, and studying Mechanical Engineering at RMIT University in Melbourne.

The latest round of layoffs follows a 10 per cent cut to Tesla's global workforce two weeks ago, estimated to affect 15,000 employees, according to Reuters.

In the hours after The Information's report was published, Elon Musk said on X (formerly Twitter) that Tesla "still plans to grow the Supercharger network".

However he said it would occur "just a slower pace for new locations" to place "more focus on 100 [per cent] uptime and expansion of existing locations."

"[Supercharger] sites under construction will be completed and we will add additional Superchargers anywhere where there are gaps," he said.

Musk did not explicitly confirm the layoffs, but implied the report was accurate by unfollowing two X accounts run by passionate Tesla owners and shareholders, saying "don’t post leaks of confidential information and expect me to follow."

While Musk claims new Supercharger sites will continue to be opened, it calls into question its long-term expansion if there is now no longer a dedicated team to service it.

Analysts and investors predicted Superchargers to be a lucrative future source of revenue for Tesla as it opens the network to electric vehicles from other brands globally.

Most car makers in the US are adopting the bespoke charging plug used on Teslas in North America – now known as NACS – in order to gain access to Tesla's Supercharger network, which is considered to be more reliable and widespread than other networks.

Yet a source has already reportedly told news agency Bloomberg "there are already discussions about rehiring some of those affected in order to operate the existing network and grow it at a much slower rate."

Bloomberg reports "some of the Supercharger servicing team" that manages access to the network by other car companies "remains intact", citing one of its sources inside Tesla.

However it appears the engineers and planning staff behind the future expansion have been laid off.

In the internal email seen by The Information, Musk is quoted as saying: "Hopefully these actions are making it clear that we need to be absolutely hard core [sic] about headcount and cost reduction.

“While some on exec staff are taking this seriously, most are not yet doing so.

"Starting at 10 AM EST on Tuesday [30 April], I will ask for the resignation of any executive who retains more than three people who don’t obviously pass the excellent, necessary and trustworthy test … I have been super clear about this."

It is unclear what the impact of the dismantling of Mr Ho's new-model launch team will be on the development of future Tesla cars.

Chief among them is a range of more affordable models – the launch of which Musk said last week would be accelerated to late 2024 or early 2025 – as well as an autonomous 'robotaxi' due to be unveiled this August.

The layoffs follow Tesla's largest year-on-year decline in quarterly deliveries in 12 years – and the first sales decline of any severity since 2020.

The company's profit margins continue to shrink as it cuts prices of its vehicles to respond to growing competition – and reverse the decline in deliveries.