Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk said on Sunday that Tesla is opening a “lot more superchargers,” without detailing whether this is in addition to the $500 million investment pledged to expand the network this year or included within.
What Happened: “We are opening a lot more Superchargers. What regions are we missing?,” Musk posed on social media platform X to a Tesla enthusiast who opined that more investment is needed in superchargers.
The enthusiast, who goes by the username Whole Mars Catalog on X, detailed that several chargers were at capacity over the weekend in San Diego owing to the huge vehicle population. Furthermore, the stations get overcrowded when the price drops below market rates at around 11 pm, he added.
“It's great that Tesla is underpricing local utilities, but if you are just on a road trip and happen to show up at exactly 11 PM it'll be a nasty experience,” he wrote.
Why It Matters: Tesla announced layoffs of at least 10% of its global workforce in April. The layoffs impacted 500 members of the supercharging team. Tesla Senior Director of Charging Infrastructure Rebecca Tinucci also left the company, leaving supercharger expansion plans in question.
However, during Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting in June, Tesla CEO Elon Musk slammed rumors of the death of its supercharger network as “greatly exaggerated.”
“Our supercharger network is continuing to grow,” Musk said.
The company continues to grow its supercharger network while keeping an eye on capital efficiency and the places they are deployed, Musk said while adding that it will deploy more “working” superchargers this year than the rest of the industry combined. Tesla will invest $500 million in expanding the network this year, Musk added.
Tesla, in its second-quarter earnings report, said that the number of supercharger connectors around the globe at the end of the second quarter was 59,596, 24% higher than the corresponding quarter of 2023.
The growth rate, however, has slowed significantly.
Superchargers grew only 3.5% from the end of the first quarter to the second, significantly lower than the quarter-on-quarter growth of 7.4% in the number of superchargers recorded through the fourth quarter of 2023.
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Image courtesy of Tesla
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