Tesla Supercharger network in Ireland

I charged twice today in Athenry on a non Tesla - I find that the Chargers on the left hand side (2a, 2b etc.) are not working for non Tesla cars - also another user had a problem disconnecting from them.

The ones on the right hand side as you drive in (1a, 2a etc.) were fine - no problems.

I assume the "plan" is to just roll it into another department and overwork everyone there

His lordship did say they'd complete all the existing sites under construction but was quiet on expansion

Maybe they're aiming to become an OEM by selling the chargers to other companies

IMO, if the SuC network is just left to rot then it'll be very bad news for Tesla. A lot of people specifically bought Tesla for the network

The question is if it's making money or not. Even the annual revenue from the network is hard to quantify since it's lumped in with a bunch of other revenue streams. And every analysis of its financials seem to completely avoid the costs associated with it.

Opening the network up might be an indication that it needed to generate more revenue, given that it was done at the expense of a very unique selling point. And now this.

Maybe they're aiming to become an OEM by selling the chargers to other companies

This I think has always been the end game.

The $55bn thing is very poorly timed, a payout like that would pay the wages of all the redundant workers for the next 40 years

And yes, I know the payout isn't cash, it's stock options and the like but it's still clear that Elon thinks he's worth $55bn of added value to the company

Any sane board of directors would be asking some difficult questions like what exactly he's done in the past year to earn that payday

It seems that he wants to focus the company onto interesting stuff like AI, robots that dance, supercars that fly and FSD

He doesn't seem particularly interested in boring stuff like model refreshes or cheapmobiles for the masses

My guess is that he's trying to get the company valued as a tech company again instead of a car company. Then he can sell the vision a lot more and bump up the share price

It was never originally supposed to be a revenue stream, it was supposed to be cost neutral to sell the cars.

Now that they have pivoted, it is to be a revenue stream afterall. So strange the timing of laying off the team

Well, I know from an insider, that with other layoffs China and US were disproportionately affected because that's where all the focus is. Tesla is doing much better in Europe, so EMEA teams are less affected. THat's what I've heard. Whether it's 100% true, I don't know.

Back to the topic.

I very much doubt the SuC team were responsible in assembling the chargers destined to Ireland. Suspecting that this fully developed (major version 4 at this stage) product is built in Shanghai these days, and based on how their Model 3/Y assembly quality is compared to US ones it doesn't seem like a disaster to me. Just a project that is now ready and doesn't warrant a full team working on it these days.

My take is that there won't be a charger version 5.

I was reading on the topic this morning and you are right. We shall see what happens in Europe, things happen quickly with this company.

In general, for a mature product like SuC v3/v4 it would make sense to drive the SuC expansion locally within the markets as opposed to centrally from one team in US.

Was it just the US team that got axed?

I'd tend to disagree with the idea of making it country specific, seems like there'd be more job duplication that way

Having a central team allows for a more global strategy to link up major routes, which seems to have been a major focus

The technology is mature, but there's always room for improvement. There's already more powerful chargers coming from some competitors

I think there will be a v5 but it'll be an incremental improvement some time in the future rather than 2-3 years from now.

You have to be huffing some good stuff to still be on the "Elon is a smart guy" bandwagon at this stage