Did Elon Cut Tesla Supercharging as a Power Move?

By Brian Wang

There has been a lot of speculation about why Tesla cut the 500 person team for Tesla Supercharging infrastructure. Patrick Bet David, successful entrepreneur, podcaster and youtuber has posted the case that Elon Musk cut the Tesla Supercharging infrastructure team and slowed/paused Supercharging network buildout as a power move to get concessions and leverage over other car makers and the government.

Tesla Has to Focus Everything on AI - FSD, Robotaxi and Teslabot

This move could save Tesla $200-300 million per year in expenses if this was for North America only and maybe $600 million if it was globally. Tesla needs to focus capital and research spending on AI (full self driving and robotaxi and teslabot). AI success in the next two years could triple of 10X the value of Tesla. If there was a 2 year pause in supercharging infrastructure then Tesla does not go to 78,000 charging connections but stays at 57,000. However, Tesla has about 25% of its chargers more fully subsidized in North America. Tesla would not pull back construction to zero but to the levels supported by the US, US states and in other countries. Tesla would also continue to build out charging network where it is needed to support their own customers and where there is very good government grant support.