As Questions Swirl Around Tesla’s Superchargers, the Race Is On to Fill the Power Gap

In a move that shocked the electric vehicle industry, Tesla yesterday eliminated the jobs of hundreds of employees in its electric vehicle charging and policy units—workers widely reputed to be best-in-class in a rapidly expanding global business.

Among those surprised and disappointed: Adam Gordon, managing partner of the New York developer Wildflower, who had worked with Tesla for some eight months, he says, to develop an electric-vehicle charging site in Maspeth, a neighborhood in Queens. The site was meant to be one of the largest charging stations in New York City, serving local drivers, those coming off the highways, and commercial fleets. Wildflower and Tesla were about to finally sign a formal agreement. But on Tuesday morning, Gordon says, he received a text message from his real estate contact at Tesla: The entire team had been fired, and cut off from their email, in the wee hours of the morning. Gordon still hasn’t heard anything official from the Tesla team, he says.

It’s “unheard-of behavior,” Gordon says, “more compatible with an out-of-money startup than the most valuable publicly traded car company in the world.” Even if some new version of the Tesla team were to reach out to finalize the deal, “we wouldn't do business with them, because the premise for a contract is reliability.”

Tesla’s strategy implosion, first reported by The Information, comes at an awkward time for the electric vehicle industry, which is trying to convince more people to drive on battery even as customer nerves about the inadequacies of the US public charging network persist. Multibillion-dollar government funding programs, aiming to build more than half a million public chargers by 2030, are just beginning to get chargers in the ground. Tesla had won just under 13 percent of federal charging grant awards, according to Politico. Now the automaker, regarded as a global leader in charging as well as building cars, has left observers with questions about whether it’s willing to participate in the vital future of EV charging.

Tesla did not respond to WIRED’s questions. “Tesla still plans to grow the Supercharger network, just at a slower pace for new locations and more focus on