Elon Musk Laid Off Supercharger Team After Taking $17 Million in Federal Charging Grants
(gizmodo.com)
from lautan@lemmy.ca to technology@lemmy.world on 01 May 2024 15:36
https://lemmy.ca/post/20403931
from lautan@lemmy.ca to technology@lemmy.world on 01 May 2024 15:36
https://lemmy.ca/post/20403931
Despite its CEO railing against Biden, Tesla was more than happy to take the administration’s money.
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Such a genius move. Us ordinary minds cannot comprehend this.
Trickle down economics should result in more jobs. In this case it didn’t. The lesson is that not enough subsidy was given because people were fired instead of hired. Suggest they give Musk more money, that should get the desired result! /s
The solution is always more tax cuts for the rich!
In the mythical land of conservative wish fulfillment, sure. In reality trickle down economics was always a lie to justify tax breaks for the wealthy.
Stealing this from a comment on the restera threaad
This is going to cascade across many companies and industries. Because this is basically taking a massive infrastructure effort and suddenly cutting off the management and production of specialized hardware.
And, tinfoil, but this very much feels like an attempt to steal the election for republicans. Because this is going to impact the infrastructure efforts of the Biden administration AND cause a lot of layoffs among blue collar workers when they can’t send invoices or get paid because everyone they knew got fired. And you can bet there will be a social media shitstorm over “Biden is trying to steal money from my company” if there is any attempt to recoup the money that is being put into a giant reward package for musk.
17 million seems like a lot, doesn’t it.
Elon wants a 56,000 million pay package.
It’s $56,000,000,000.00.
Fifty six BILLION dollars.
Or, if you’re trying to make it more directly comparable to 17 million (because humans aren’t great at implicitly comparing that many zeros), that would be 56,000 millions. It’s not how we normally say it, but 17 vs 56,000 feels different than 17 million vs 56 billion.
While odd looking to some of us, they were actually right. That’s 56,000 “millions” or 56,000 x 1,000,000 = 56 billion. A mind blowing amount of cash.
Most of us have no intuition about millions of anything let alone billions, same as we have a good handle on seconds and days and years but start talking about nanoseconds or centuries and most of us have completely lost any meaningful frame of reference.
The difference between a million and a billion dollars is approximately 1 billion dollars.
He quite literally does not add this amount of value in any way. No single human possibly could. What a joke.
Maybe it’s time we nationalize our infrastructure. Railroads, telecom, electric grid. The capitalists have jerked us around nonstop
Agree. Let’s start with Tesla!
As a Tesla owner, I fully agree!
At least the charging network. We can buy it off Tesla no problem (we already have them a $17 million down payment).
Then start printing up new stickers to cover the Tesla logos.
I don’t even own an EV and I support funding this. It’s probably cheaper than the existing charger network plan anyway and would allow actually standardizing around the smaller smarter Tesla plugs too.
Let’s liquidate Tesla and expand the rail network instead!
Woah now, what are you, some kinda red socialist commie? 🇺🇲😠🛻
I prefer coral
There was a time when I could have thought that level of calculation of Musk. That time is long since gone. His mouth cost him $44 billion when he was forced to buy twitter because of his edgy comments online. Musk’s recent comments about the firings were his version of the criteria of “excellent, necessary, and trustworthy” and did not, apparently include the entire Supercharger team. Any outside observer would say the Supercharger team is absolutely “excellent, necessary, and trustworthy”.
This latest action by Musk just reeks like a mania episode with a good dose of paranoia mixed it. I don’t think it has anything to do with the election.
I was holding stock specifically to be able to vote Musk out, but this latest move was the last straw. I sold what I had after the announcement yesterday. Its already down $5/share lower than when I sold mine yesterday.
He’s smart enough to listen if someone like Banon or Putin contacted him though. He could be dumb and doing what someone else tells him to do.
Yup. Even the twitter stupidity makes a lot more sense if his “friends” were egging him on to destroy one of the most useful tools out there for activists to coordinate and information to spread outside of state outlets.
Same way Candace Owen used to hang around with Kanye and all of a sudden he started saying all his racist shit out loud. It was always there based on some inside stories, but theres a corealtion with his worse public decisions and her influence.
Yeah a lot of recent musk has seemed like a manic state and paranoia. He’s reported to have been doing a lot more drugs lately. So that would probably make sense
Such a “clever businessman.” Embezelling $17 million in taxpayer dollars to enrich himself.
It is clever until he faces some consequences.
If* he faces consequences. FTFY
Wake me up when he ever faces consequences.
His companies paying fines doesn’t count. Musk paying fines less than 1% of his net worth don’t count either.
Buying Twitter was, arguably, a consequence.
I thought that at first, but he seems to have emjoyed killing it and reanimating the corpse as whatever the hell ‘X’ is supposed to be.
It’s the social media company he founded, obviously.
Which, even if it went directly into his pocket, doesn’t even move the needle for him.
Like another poster said, his goals are more likely politically aligned. He wants EV infrastructure to fail to show libtards are squandering tax money. Self fulfilling prophecy and all that.
Why the tesla board hasn’t sent him packing yet is beyond me. There must be some golden parachute clause that would be very expensive, but he’s doing massive harm to their brand that it must be worth it to cut him loose at this point.
Edit - I also think this ego maniac is sabotaging his own charging infrastructure simply because the government passed a bill (IIRC) that requires the charging stations be accessible to any EV. Not that it needs to provide the connectors on-site - other EV drivers will need to bring their own adapters. Simply that the payment system allows non-tesla owners to use it.
He’s stacked the board with his friends and family. They’re not going to raise the chance of it themselves.
Our only chance is/was actions by activist investors. I suppose I would have been considered one of those until yesterday when I sold.
His board is full of friends, family, and other sycophants.
Shareholders won’t vote Elon out because he is sadly the one reason its so highly valued, and if he goes, the stock price does with it. They won’t do anything until the company is on fire, and its not yet.
Given that yesterday’s layoff news did nothing to the stock price, we’re getting there.
Elon isn’t the one reason. Tesla stock skyrocketed in value the moment Bill Gates and other hedge funds announced they are shorting the stock.
Other hedge funds decided “I will take that bet” and here we are.
This shit can destroy companies and tank its value
Leaving hundreds of contacts in limbo with no resolution has the potential to cost more than $17 million in legal fees and termination clauses.
Where the fuck is the board of directors and why are none of the shareholders revolting?
We the shareholders trust Musk completely. He is, after all, a genius.
Nah, I’m playing! Only thing I ever had shares of was the ex wife, and I wasn’t even aware she was publicly traded until I accidentally dropped in on a shareholder meeting. I gave mine away. :p
To give you an idea of who is on the tesla board of directors, it includes Kimbal Musk, his brother, and James Murdoch, of the Murdoch family you’re probably thinking of. Musk himself owns something like 20% of the company, the board owns some, his cult members also have some share. The rest of the shareholders are either institutional or retail investors who are some combination of not willing to rock the boat, don’t have enough voting power, and/or just don’t care.
I’m HAPPY my Tax Dollars went to Laying People Off INSTEAD of feeding Starving American Children!
To the surprise of literally no one.
Why can’t we seize this cunt’s assets? He plays states, the Fed… wtf?
We can. It’s just that the cunts who have the ability to do so are butt buddies with him.
You can insult the person and his cronies without resorting to homophobic shit like that.
Musk is such a welfare queen.
I haven’t seen anyone actually describe what this “team” is.
Tesla’s PR teams said that they’re still expanding the network, but at a slower pace. If that’s the case, I assume this mostly guts the product and program management folks, and the goal is to consolidate this department with a related department.
Does anyone actually have details about the full scope of layoffs and the scope of who remains?
The entire charging team is gone, not a single person remains to even issue a repair order…
Yikes.
That’s the crazy thing. He is letting the entire division go instead of just replacing the head he might have had a problem with. So now the good workers and the bad workers if there are such, are all being flushed out of the Tesla toilet.
Notice how he waited until the major American vehicle manufacturers decided to move to the Tesla charging standard for future models.
Killing the charging network kills the EV market.
And on an entirely unrelated note, the Saudis financed the Twitter buyout…
I mean, the US EV market. Pretty big sure, but not the “entire”
From up thread if you haven’t seen it:
Is there any other reference? Hard to trust a random Lemmy comment
“Two sources told Electrek that Tinucci was fighting back pressure from Musk to fire a bigger percentage of her team, and the CEO decided to let go of the entire team as an example.”
electrek.co/…/elon-musk-throwing-weight-tesla-wre…
Thanks, kinda funny the writer put their own tweet embed in the article.
That was hilarious.
Imagine taking your most strategic asset, and an industry leading product, then doing this to it.
Musk is this generation’s Howard Hughes. He was always eccentric and weird, but he’s aggressively sliding into his compulsions like Hughes did.
Hughes ended up locked away, in a dark penthouse, getting yearly fingernail cuts, with a collection of urine filled bottles.
So you’re saying there’s a chance he’s just gonna disappear one day. DON’T YOU TOY WITH MY EMOTIONS IF YOU DON’T REALLY MEAN IT!!
He’s another Trump. Musk may have money but he has no idea how to spend it.
Just like trumps ventures they all failed because he’s a shmuck with zero business clue.
Inherited mommy and daddy’s money but pisses it all away on shit ideas and terrible execution.
Soon we’ll hear musk is broke because he spent it all on shit he can’t handle.
He is broke. He spent his money on a website, immediately crash and burned it, and interestingly wants the purchase value back as pay from Tesla’s board.
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This shit don’t pay for itself
He seems to have gotten a lot worse lately, obviously he’s always been a jackass and narcissistic. But up until recently most of his business decisions have been mostly rational. From the accounts I’ve read he has gotten rid of most of if not all of his competent advisors and has been doing a lot more drugs. I think what we are seeing here is an extended manic state, brought on by a lack of stability/stress, some underlying psychological issues, and a whole bunch of drugs.
Oh and just in case people think I’m defending him. I hate that fucker. I just think it is much more complicated than simple incompetency.
I hope his drug addictions bring him a lot of pain and anguish.
Fuck that clown.
I said somewhere that I believe Tesla as a csr manufacturer is fucked but they light pivot into being a charging company and battery provider, it seems big brain musket is hellbent on ruining the good parts of his company too
Dude could’ve owned America’s next generation energy infrastructure if he played his cards right.
Provided to him on a silver fucking platter… I mean, it’s astonishing how incompetent he is/was/or is becoming. Holy shit.
i believe nowadays the only thing motivating musk that comes on a silver platter is a pile of coke
e: wtf my grammar had a stroke
I thought Bezos was the piss bottle guy.
Hughes was the OG rich pee bottle guy.
Bezos distributes them to employees, but I’m not aware of him using them himself
Nah, Musk is an incompetent idiot who got incredibly lucky and managed to fail upwards. He’s not eccentric, he’s just an asshole
Maybe the Fed should take the money back
Feels like they should, I’m not exactly thrilled by the idea of my tax dollars going into Musk’s pocket just for the hell of it
Rumor has it that this is a temper tantrum after a competitor unveiled 10 minute charging technology.
Seriously… If that’s true this may be the dumbest temper tantrum Elon has had yet and there are a lot of competing temper tantrums.
sounds like D’Elon the Musketeer
www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/…/ar-AA1o03Fw
pcmag.com/…/toyota-touts-solid-state-evs-with-932…
I did not know about the leaps in charging they’ve been making. Thank you.
Yeah it’s impressive. When this infrastructure is built-out to where I’m at 30 years from now, if I’m still alive, I might get an EV.
Just to be clear, Toyota has been making these claims for quite a while now. Until they making examples we can purchase and verify, I’m going to continue filing these claims under “vaporware”.
Yes, Toyota is using these announcements to dissuade customers from going electric while they continue to sell only ice and hybrid vehicles. Remember that Toyota came out with the Prius 20 years ago and have done nothing since.
Polestar has already equipped vehicles with this tech.
Which polestar?
The polestar 1 is a hybrid (discontinued)
Polestar 2 charges 20% to 80% in 28 minutes using LGES or CATL batteries depending on spec
Polestar 3 (unreleased) charges 20% to 80% in 30 minutes using LNMC batteries
Polestar 4 (unreleased) charges 20% to 80% in 30 minutes using LNMC batteries
Polestar 5 (unreleased) is still in development
The PS5, and yeah still unreleased, but already driving prototypes out in the wild. They are using the companys tech mentioned in the article and hopefully we’ll see widespread adoption after testing.
I’m usually sceptic, but for once these new battery inventions are actually already implemented, and not just on paper or in a lab.
This is why I fucking hate government grants to corporations. These assholes never put in safeguards to actually force these jackass companies to actually use it as intended.
I’m OK with grants for certain things/times/whatever. But it seems like if the owner is worth billions and comes to the gov’t for a handout, the gov’t should just tax them correctly and say,“No you.”
Oh I think it’s all going how it was intended. Just not going according to the public justification.
Infrastructure should be public anyways, so instead of giving grants to private for profit companies, it would instead use that money to just fund the infrastructure.
Although I understand the sentiment, the instrument under which the funding has been granted is called NEVI and has pretty strict requirements about what gets built (150kW rated, payment terminal equipped charging stations along major roads) as well as transparency requirements about reliability.
Can they just not build them and keep the money though?
Looking at the several billion dollars that we gave the telecommunication companies over the last two decades for “nation wide high speed fiber infrastructure,” I would say the answer is not only yes, but we will keep giving them more money for the same damn thing.
Yeah, that came to mind too
Government grants should come with government share % of the company.
Or at least with heavy requirements and obligations like every government “grant” for normals people.
Incredibly speculative, but this could also be Elon’s Saudi investors’ plan to blow up the EV market in America. If the charging infrastructure becomes unreliable, it kills the entire market.
The “Boring Company” killed light rail in several cities with empty promises. The Saudis bailed out his purchase of Twitter once.
Again speculative, but Elon and the Saudis working together checks a lot of boxes.
He’s not working for the Saudis. Bonesaw showed up and told him what to do. Or else.
The wrestler guy from the Tobey Maguire version of Spiderman?
…sure yeah let’s go with that
I assume you are joking, but in case you are not, the bonesaw they are talking about is the crown prince of Saudi Arabia:
en.wikipedia.org/…/Assassination_of_Jamal_Khashog…
Obviously I’m joking
The big oil corporations have been busy buying up all the competing charging networks, so that much tracks.
This explains so much and feels like an anti trust monitor should be assigned.
I doubt it actually. My guess is they got the tesla charger adopted for all US electric cars, so now they can just be greedy and have others build infrastructure instead of them. They can invest nothing and still get chargers made for them now. Why would we expect Tesla to continue spending money now?
Chargers earn reliable income? They even selll subscriptions. I have no idea whether they are profitable or not but there’s no reason this couldn’t be a nice steady income indefinitely
This means they’ll gradually lose de facto control over the charging standards to other car companies, though.
This just means other companies can hire people that already know the standards better than whoever Tesla ends up with.
It might give Elon a month or two of added delay before other companies start using the Tesla chargers.
But it is absolutely more of Elon turning this chapter of his life into a sequel of Brewster’s Millions, and like all sequels - it sucks.
But I loved the Richard Pryor version!
Everyone did. I think. Pretty sure.
Who cares it’s boring stop posting it
Boring is a different Musk company
There’s other headlines you can read
Had a friend turn down 4 internships when they got one at Tesla, and now, just as the summers coming up, they recinded a bunch of internship offers.
But they’re crazy, after all that’s gone down w Elon they just bought a Model 3
hol up what kind of intern can afford to buy a Model 3?
Don’t you basically have to have rich parents to even survive as an intern?
No, plenty of well paying software internships.
IT as well, or at least there were back in the late '90s early '00s back when I was in the field
wtf is that bullshit. interning is basically required experience in some fields (engineering especially). companies will usually pay for your housing and food even
She works part time as a decently paid HR or something like that, has a husband in software dev, and is in the process of changing careers.
No executive deserves the kind of money and power he is demanding. The workers deserve it. Executive positions must become democratically elected from within the workforce, exclusively, modestly compensated, with checks and balances, for limited terms representing the company workforce.
This is our world he’s fucking with.
There are two things Tesla and Elon has done well. Making EVs mainstream and cool. And the super charger network. Everything else. Bleh
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