Tesla’s pullback puts onus on others to build EV chargers
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, blindsided competitors, suppliers and his own employees last week by reversing course on his aggressive push to build electric vehicle chargers in the United States, a major priority of the Biden administration.
Musk’s decision to lay off the 500-member team responsible for installing charging stations, and to sharply slow investment in new stations, baffled the industry and raised doubts about whether the number of public chargers would grow fast enough to keep pace with sales of batterypowered cars. It put the onus on other charging companies, raising questions about whether they can build fast enough to address a shortage that appears to be discouraging some people from buying electric cars.
As the owner of the largest charging network in the United States, Tesla has a powerful effect on people’s views of electric cars.
“There is certainly a psychological component,” said Robert Zabors, a senior partner at Roland Berger, a consulting firm. “Availability and reliability are critical to overall EV adoption.”
Tesla’s change of direction, only days after it had told shareholders in a securities filing that it would “rapidly” expand its charging network, which it calls Supercharger, is likely to delay construction of fast chargers, which are concentrated along the two coasts and in parts of Texas.
Wildflower, a New York real estate developer, was on the verge of signing a lease with Tesla to build a charging center near the intersection of interstates 278 and 495 in Queens. Then Adam Gordon, the firm’s managing partner, got a text message from the Tesla executive he had been working with.
“‘Hey, I was fired at 4 a.m. and my boss was fired too,’ ” the Tesla manager said, according to Gordon. “That was the only communication we got from Tesla,” he added.
Another charging company is likely to take over the site, which has a permit to obtain power, Gordon said. But Tesla’s withdrawal will inevitably delay the project.
No other company has as much experience and expertise as Tesla in installing charging stations, which range from a handful of plugs in the corner of parking lots to dozens of them at dedicated sites, often along highways.
The automaker accounts for 25,500 of the 42,000 fast chargers installed in the United States, according to federal government data. A fast charger can top up an electric-car battery in 10 minutes to an hour, depending on the car and the charger. There are about 132,000 slower public chargers that can fully recharge electric cars in roughly eight to 12 hours.
Tesla began building its Supercharger stations in 2012 to give owners of the Model S sedan a place to fuel on road trips. Buyers of its earlier model, the Roadster sports car, charged primarily at home.
Other companies may not be able to build chargers as quickly or as cheaply as Tesla, said Daniel Bowermaster, senior manager of electric transportation at the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit group in Palo Alto, California, where Tesla once had its headquarters.
“There is significant opportunity, kind of regardless of what Tesla does,” Bowermaster said. “It will be addressed by the market. How do they do it in a timely, costeffective manner?”
But some in the industry say Tesla won’t be missed as much as it would have been a few years ago. Government subsidies and private capital are fueling a surge in charger construction that does not depend on Tesla: The number of public fast chargers in the United States increased by nearly 11,000, or about 36%, from April 2023 to April 2024.
“The public charging experience is going to get easier,” said Peter Slowik, an auto expert at the International Council on Clean Transportation, a research organization. “I don’t think the charging market and the electric vehicle market is slowing down because of Tesla.”
Tesla manufactures charging hardware for Supercharger stations at a factory in Buffalo, New York, which was necessary a few years ago when there weren’t many suppliers. Since then, many companies have begun selling charging equipment, and the technology has become standardized.
Last year, virtually all major automakers selling cars in North America agreed to use the charging plug developed by Tesla starting in 2025, reducing complexity. Electric cars in Europe and China rely on standards different from the one used by Tesla in North America.