Ford EV Rival Tesla Backtracks On Some Supercharger Firings

With demand for all-electric vehicles failing to meet expected levels of growth as of late, EV automakers like Tesla are feeling the crunch, and subsequently, laying off workers. Tesla recently shaved around 10 precent of its global workforce – including many from its Supercharger division, apparently – which caused quite a bit of a stir in the news recently, along with conflicting reports regarding the company’s planned cheap EV model. Given the fact that Ford inked a deal with Tesla granting its owners access to the Supercharger network and developed an adapter for that purpose, this caused some concern with Blue Oval EV owners as well, though that plan is moving forward even as that part is facing some supply chain issues. Now, according to Bloomberg, Tesla has reportedly backtracked on some of its Supercharger related layoffs, too.

According to this new report, Tesla has already begun the process of hiring back at least some of the roughly 500 members of its Supercharger team that were let go mere weeks ago, including Max de Zegher, the company’s director of charging for North America. It isn’t currently clear how many of these employees will be returning to the team, however, and requests for comment have thus far been declined.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has promised that the company will continue to expand its Supercharger network in spite of these layoffs, albeit at a more measured and calculated pace. He revealed that Tesla plans on spending $500 million to do precisely that this year alone, though the company will also focus on improving uptime at existing Supercharger locations.

Regardless, Tesla’s decision to lay off a large percentage of its Supercharger operation came as a massive surprise to most, given the fact that after the company signed its aforementioned deal with Ford, it proceeded to do the same with essentially every other EV automaker that sells cars in the U.S., too.

We’ll have more on everything Ford’s competition is up to soon, so be sure and subscribe to Ford Authority for continuous Ford news coverage.