tesla motors

[Holman]

Has anyone pointed out that the cybertruck is the Windows Millennium of automobiles?

[Max Peck]

This seems fine...

Tesla to lay off everyone working on Superchargers, new vehicles

There's more chaos at Tesla this week. The Information reports that last night, the company's erratic CEO Elon Musk emailed workers with news that he has dismissed a key pair of executives—one responsible for the Supercharger network and the other head of new vehicle development.

The electric car maker posted its quarterly results last week, and they paint a poor picture, with shrinking sales and plummeting profit margins. While Tesla once had a strong first-mover advantage and benefited from Musk's marketing savvy, the company has frequently ignored the many hard-learned lessons of the auto industry.

Customers not turned off by Musk's antics instead are losing interest with a product lineup of two EVs that are ancient in car years (the Models S and X) and two EVs that are merely old (the Models 3 and Y). The Models 3 and Y are also the only two vehicles that Tesla sells in volume. Any other automaker would have a second-generation Model 3 ready to go either this year or next, but at Tesla, the product pipeline is empty.

And yet, Tesla is not just laying off Daniel Ho, director of vehicle programs and new product introduction, but also his entire team.

Even Tesla's harshest critics must concede that the company's Supercharger network is its star asset. Tesla has more fast chargers in operation than anyone else, and this year opened them up to other automakers, which are adopting the J3400 plug standard.

All of which makes the decision to get rid of senior director of EV charging Rebecca Tinucci—along with her entire team—a bit of a head-scratcher. If I were the driver of a non-Tesla EV expecting to get access to Superchargers this year, I'd probably expect this to result in some friction. Musk told workers that Tesla "will continue to build out some new Supercharger locations, where critical, and finish those currently under construction."

[LawBeefaroni]

College kids feeling the love now:

Elon Musk said he wanted to be “absolutely hardcore” about reducing Tesla’s headcount earlier this week, and it looks like he’s entered full “demon mode,” as his biographer calls it. Now, an unlikely cohort is feeling his wrath: Tesla’s summer interns. College students shared how Musk’s cost-cutting efforts imploded their summer plans, first reported by Bloomberg Wednesday.

“I will no longer be interning at Tesla this summer,” said one North Carolina State University student on LinkedIn Thursday, who posted a month earlier that he’d received an offer. “After a single phone call of less than two minutes, my entire plan for this summer had vanished as if it had never even existed.”

Shaddup, kid, we gave you have a whole three weeks advanced notice!

[stessier]

In fairness, that's not just a Tesla thing. All the big companies I've worked for would do it like that if the decision was made to cut Interns.

[Jaymann]

Alas, my free self driving trial has elapsed. Never tried it once.