Tesla ending Supercharger work based at its Buffalo plant

Tesla, which said earlier this month that it would cut 14% of its workforce – 285 jobs in all –- at its South Park Avenue factory, now plans to eliminate its entire 500-person Supercharging team, according to an email from CEO Elon Musk that was obtained by the website The Information.

Tesla makes its Superchargers at the Buffalo plant – part of its efforts to build up its local workforce and avoid a $41.2 million penalty from the state for not meeting its pledge to employ 1,460 people at the factory that was built and partially equipped with more than $950 million in funds from state taxpayers.

Tesla also does power electronics production in Buffalo that makes components that increase energy density and allow for faster vehicle charging times while minimizing the size, weight and heat produced during charging, the company said in its annual report to state officials in February.

Tesla has never specified how many people work in its Supercharging team in Buffalo. Tesla, which eliminated its media relations department, could not be reached to comment on the impact the elimination of the Supercharging operations would have on Buffalo. State officials said Tuesday they had no information about further job cuts in Buffalo.

The first round of job cuts, disclosed in a filing with the state Labor Department, indicated that 280 jobs will be eliminated at Tesla’s South Park Avenue factory, which it said employed 2,025 people before the cuts started taking place. That would leave its so-called Buffalo Gigafactory with 1,845 workers once the job cuts are completed.

Eliminating the Supercharging unit would be a significant change in approach for Tesla, which previously has focused on building and maintaining its own network of electric vehicle charging stations.

The email said that Tesla will continue to build out some new Superchargers, and will finish those under construction, online news site Elecktrek reported.

The reports said Rebecca Tinucci, Tesla’s senior director of EV charging, also is leaving the company.

Tesla said two weeks ago that it was cutting 14,000 jobs among its 140,000-person workforce after its electric vehicle sales slumped during the first quarter and Musk said the company’s costs had grown too much after years of rapid growth.

“Hopefully these actions are making it clear that we need to be absolutely hard core about headcount and cost reduction,” Musk wrote in an email to Tesla managers on Monday, The Information report said. “While some on exec staff are taking this seriously, most are not yet doing so.”

The Supercharging work is important for the Buffalo factory because it has failed to become the hub for solar panel production that state officials originally envisioned.

Instead, Tesla shifted away from production of conventional solar panels as the solar energy installation business it acquired with its deal to buy SolarCity shrunk because the company has devoted most of its resources to its electric vehicle and battery production and storage businesses.

Tesla, which previously had reported its solar energy deployments during its quarterly reports to shareholders, stopped including that information in its latest edition released last week – a sign of the solar energy business’ diminishing importance in the company’s operations.

Tesla continues to use the Buffalo factory to produce its expensive and complex solar roof, which has failed to catch on commercially. Tesla has never said how many solar roofs it produces in Buffalo, but a report last spring from energy research firm Wood Mackenzie said the number was around 3,000 since 2016.

The Supercharging work, however, had given the Buffalo factory what was seen as a stable – and potentially growing – source of work as more people bought electric vehicles and there was a growing need to build out a nationwide network of charging stations.

The company last year began making a new version of its Supercharger in Buffalo that could be prefabricated in Buffalo and then shipped to sites – a process that company officials said was cheaper and faster.

“We load them on a truck. We truck them to site and then we crane them into position,” Tinucci said during a presentation to investors last year. “This method saves us 15% on our deployment costs and we can install it in days.”

Tesla said it installed the first of its latest generation prefabricated charging posts in the United States earlier this year in West Seneca.

Tesla has been successful in getting other electric vehicle makers to adopt the same style of charging plug that it uses – allowing vehicles from other manufacturers to use Tesla chargers.

“The recent and near unanimous vehicle manufacturer adoption of Tesla’s North American Charging Standard ensures that Gigafactory New York will remain a vital production center as it also begins supplying equipment for other vehicle charging providers,” the company said in its report to the state.

The elimination of the Supercharging team would eliminate that business.

Tesla also has hired hundreds of people to work – 675, according to a company statement in February 2023 – on its autonomous driving programs for electric vehicles. Most of those positions are for data annotation work that requires only a high school diploma.