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Teslas sudden move to lay off most of its Supercharger division shocked the electric vehicle industry, halted construction plans, and left pretty much anyone paying attention baffled.

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Thats because the Austin, Texas-based automaker is a pretty big deal in the EV charging industry and not just because of how many cars it sells. The company delivered about 8% of the public charging capacity demanded across the world last year, according to BloombergNEF.

But that might all be in turmoil. In a letter to senior executives on Monday, Musk said he would ask any executive who retains more than three people who dont obviously pass the excellent, necessary and trustworthy test to resign. Rebecca Tinucci, the executive in charge of the Supercharger division, argued with Musk and tried to fire fewer workers than he asked for, Elecktrek reports. In return, the CEO decided to fire almost all of her 500-worker team as an example.

The move had instant ramifications.

Tesla reportedly backed out of four leases for upcoming Supercharger stations in New York City, while suppliers have found themselves left without contacts. Representatives at some major automakers, including Rivian, who have signed agreements to adopt Teslas North American Charging Standard (NACS) plugs have likewise lost their points of contact.

As contractors for the Supercharger network, my team woke up to a sharp kick in the pants this morning, Andres Pinter, co-CEO of Bullet EV Charging Solutions, told Reuters Tuesday. Pinter later told The Wall Street Journal that all 20 of his contacts at Tesla had been let go.

The move has also been heavily criticized, with experts noting that charging anxiety also known as range anxiety is one of the biggest issues holding back consumers from buying EVs. Quickly building more infrastructure across North America is seen as one of the few surefire ways to address those concerns, especially as EV sales growth slows.

Musk confirmed on Tuesday that Tesla will continue to grow the Supercharger network, just at a slower pace for new locations and more focus on 100% uptime and expansion of existing locations. Bloomberg reports that Tesla has already considered rehiring some of the laid-off workers to oversee the slower expansion.

Teslas Supercharger division is a big deal. The company operates 2,479 Supercharger stations with a collective 27,629 charging ports in North America, plus another 4,817 locations with 11,886 EV charging ports across its destination charging network, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Tesla was on track to earn $7.4 billion of the worldwide $127 billion EV charging industry by 2070, according to BloombergNEF. On a global basis, it has more than 57,000 Superchargers, which generated $1.74 billion of charging revenue in 2023. Thats about 1.5% of total revenue for the year and 17% of Teslas Services & Other segment.

The automaker has major deals to support charging for customers of other car companies, like Ford Motor Co. and General Motors. For now, none of the more than a dozen Western automakers that have signed deals with Tesla expect plans to change.

In addition to its deals to support other automakers, Tesla supplies companies with chargers at hotels and rest stops. The oil giant BP which recently trimmed its EV workforce has placed an order for $100 million worth of Superchargers to be installed in its U.S.-based pulse network. The chargers are set to be installed at TravelCenters of America, Amoco, and Thorntons sites.

Tesla is also a major recipient of U.S. grant money. The company has won almost 13% of all grants handed down by the Biden administration to EV charging companies to expand their networks, which comes out to more than $17 million. That cash was awarded to help Tesla build 41 charging stations in the U.S.

But that was before CEO Elon Musk decided he wanted to go absolutely hardcore about reducing Teslas headcount.

Firing the Supercharger team just as they are starting to get [National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure law] funding for new stations and other [manufacturers] are waiting to connect seems foolish and short-sighted, but thats not new for Elon, Guidehouse Insights analyst Sam Abuelsamid told DesignNews this week.

Tuesdays layoffs ensure that at least 14,500 Tesla workers have been laid off since April, although the real figure could stand at more than 20,000.

Tesla last month said it would cut more than 10% of its 140,000-person strong global workforce, or 14,000 workers at minimum. But Musk had reportedly pushed to lay off about 20% of the company an amount, he reasoned, that would match Teslas sales decline between the fourth quarter of 2023 and the first quarter of 2024.

More than 20,000 people may have been laid off in that first round of headcount reductions, Bloomberg reported last month.

In addition to rank-and-file workers, at least six high-profile executives have reportedly have either already resigned or plan to later this year, including Tinucci and Daniel Ho, who had been at Tesla for more than 10 years and led its new products division until Tuesday.

Drew Baglino, who led powertrain and energy engineering, and Rohan Patel, who led Teslas public policy and business development team, resigned last month. Martin Viecha, Teslas head of investor relations, closed the companys first-quarter earnings call by announcing his resignation. And Allie Arebalo, Teslas head of human resources and one of the most senior women at Tesla, left the company this week.

The rest is here:

Elon Musk laid off Tesla's Supercharger team. The impact could be huge - Quartz

Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, blindsided competitors, suppliers and his own employees this week by reversing course on his aggressive push to build electric vehicle chargers in the United States, a major priority of the Biden administration.

Mr. Musks 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 battery-powered 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 peoples 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 E.V. adoption.

Teslas 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 firms managing partner, got a text message from the Tesla executive he had been working with.

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Tesla Pullback Puts Onus on Others to Build Electric Vehicle Chargers - The New York Times

Elon Musk said he plans to reinstate the X account of white-nationalist activist and all-around problematic podcaster Nick Fuentes.

On X on Thursday, Musk caved to a users demand to make good on his promise and bring Fuentes back to the social media site, from which he has been banned for over a year.

Its unclear what Musks promise was, but the billionaire has seemingly been determined to bring as many far-right voices espousing dangerous conspiracy theories back to the platform as possible.

Very well, he will be reinstated, provided he does not violate the law, and let him be crushed by the comments and Community Notes, Musk wrote in a response to the demand. It is better to have anti whatever out in the open to be rebutted than grow simmering in the darkness.

Seth Dillon, the CEO of conservative satire website Babylon Bee and fervent Musk fanboy, touted the decision in a post on X.

You don't have to like what someone says to support their right to say it, he wrote. Anyone who isn't breaking the law (e.g., calling for violence, making threats, etc.) should be permitted to speak in the public square. If you don't like what they have to say, respond with more speech or tune them out.

Musk responded to the post, writing Exactly!

Of course, thanks to Xs algorithm, its unlikely that Fuentes speech would be buried by more speech, but rather be whisked away to a right-wing sub-communityor even promoted by the sites Who to Follow feature like Alex Jones, the far-right broadcaster and conspiracy theorist who was recently reinstated, even after being handed a series of legal judgements of more than $1 billion for a hoax campaign claiming that a 2012 school shooting in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, was faked.

The decision to reinstate Fuentes comes months after Musk himself faced criticism over alleged antisemitic statements, accusations the technology baron called bogus.

Fuentes was first kicked off the platform in July 2021. Before then, Twitter administrators were unwilling to ban the right-wing activist, even when he floated the idea to assassinate state legislators the day before the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. By the end of 2021 he was also banned from Facebook and YouTube.

Fuentes was unsuspended from the app for a single day in Jan. 2023, before being promptly banned yet again. According to Hannah Gais, a senior researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center, Fuentes had tweeted several antisemitic comments immediately upon having his account reinstated.

He also shared a video promoting Kanye Wests 2024 presidential campaign, which included one of the rappers virulent antisemitic tweets, where he said he planned to go death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE, according to The Hill.

Since being banned, Fuentes has tried to remain on the site using a series of burner accounts, The Daily Beast reported in October.

A Holocaust denier, Fuentes marched alongside his fellow neo-Nazis at the deadly Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017. He was later invited to dine at Mar-a-Lago with former president Donald Trump and Kanye West in 2022.

Fuentes has previously said that he believes improving the rights of women and LGBTQ+ people constitutes the bastardized Jewish subversion of the American creed. The Founders never intended for America to be a refugee camp for nonwhite people. Fuentes started his America First livestream and podcast to deliver his hate speech directly to his followers, colloquially known as groypers.

Link:

Elon Musk Wants To Bring Neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes Back to X - The Daily Beast

You'd really be saving yourself a lot of bother if you just weren't on Twitter

Updated 14:31 5 May 2024 GMT+1Published 14:21 5 May 2024 GMT+1

Elon Musk has asked JK Rowling if she'd like to spend her time on the social media platform he bought for billions talking about something else for a change.

As you might have gathered in recent years, the Harry Potter author has become controversial for her views on the rights of the transgender community.

It's consumed rather a lot of her social media output as well, as she recently hit out at the actors who performed in the film adaptations of her movies.

Rowling had been reacting to the findings of a review into the NHS gender identity services by Dr Hilary Cass, saying she was 'b****y angry' about it.

One of her followers said they were 'waiting for Dan and Emma to give you a very public apology', a reference to the support Harry Potter stars Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson gave to trans people.

Radcliffe wrote an essay for LGBTQ+ group The Trevor Project where he apologised for the 'pain' Rowling had caused, while Watson told her trans followers that she and 'so many other people around the world see you, respect you and love you for who you are'.

Many other Harry Potter stars have weighed in on the matter and when Rowling's follower told her they were expecting apologies from Radcliffe and Watson 'safe in the knowledge that you will forgive them', the author didn't seem intent on building bridges, writing: "Not safe, I'm afraid.

"Celebs who cosied up to a movement intent on eroding women's hard-won rights and who used their platforms to cheer on the transitioning of minors can save their apologies for traumatised detransitioners and vulnerable women reliant on single-sex spaces."

Radcliffe was recently asked about what Rowling said, and explained that from his perspective while his life would have been very different without Harry Potter 'that doesnt mean that you owe the things you truly believe to someone else for your entire life'.

That's just part of the regular social media activity from Rowling on the topic and her feed is full of other posts containing her views on trans rights.

It has reached a point where X (Twitter) boss Elon Musk has asked her whether she'd be willing to consider posting about a different subject for a while.

Commenting yesterday (4 May) on a month-old post from Rowling, he wrote: "While I heartily agree with your points regarding sex/gender, may I suggest also posting interesting and positive content on other matters?"

Yep, that's the boss of X asking one of the most followed accounts on X to post about something else for a bit.

Rowling did acknowledge Musk's message and shared a post about something else, though insisted it 'should in no way be interpreted as me doing as I'm told'.

Do you ever feel like maybe social media hasn't been a good thing?

The Ron actor said in a statement in 2020: "I firmly stand with the trans community and echo the sentiments expressed by many of my peers. Trans women are women. Trans men are men."

In an interview with the Times two years later, he added, "I liken JK Rowling to an auntie. I don't necessarily agree with everything my auntie says, but she's still my auntie. It's a tricky one."

The Voldemort actor told The New York Times in 2022: "The verbal abuse directed at her is disgusting, it's appalling.

"I can understand a viewpoint that might be angry at what she says about women. But it's not some obscene, uber-right-wing fascist. It's just a woman saying, 'I'm a woman and I feel I'm a woman and I want to be able to say that I'm a woman.'"

Melling, who played Dudley Dursley, told the Independent in 2022: "I can only speak for myself, and what I feel, to me, is very simple, which is that transgender women are women and transgender men are men."

Lynch played Luna Lovegood in the films and told the Telegraph: "I just felt that her character has always been to advocate for the most vulnerable members of society. The problem is that there's a disagreement over who's the most vulnerable.

"I do wish people would just give her more grace and listen to her."

Topics:JK Rowling, Elon Musk, Twitter, Social Media, LGBTQ

Link:

People baffled as Elon Musk takes aim at JK Rowling amid controversy - LADbible

Starlink satellite internet terminals are reportedly still operating in unlicensed places, despite the companys warning last month that the service would be shut down by May 1 in those areas.

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A resident of Al-Fashir in North Darfur, Sudan was able to conduct an interview with Bloomberg using one on Wednesday.

Im currently talking to you through the Starlink connection, its the only way of connecting between people, especially those who fled the war, he told Bloomberg, referring to the civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The Starlink shutdown warnings came after Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal reported of its unauthorized use in nations including Russia, Yemen, and Venezuela. Starlink accountholders received emails from Starlink about the impending shutdown in those unlicensed areas, Bloomberg and the Journal reported. If you are operating your Starlink Kit in an area other than areas designated as available on the Starlink Availability Map, we would like to remind you that this is in violation of the Starlink terms, the email read, adding that those users would be unable to connect to the internet starting on April 30th.

An online poll found that of almost 100 Starlink customers in South Africa, 73% could still use the service after the shutdown date, Bloomberg reported, adding that some Starlink customers in Sudan were also able to access the service.

Starlink users were told in an email the service was only intended for temporary travel and transit, in unlicensed places, rather than for permanent use. It added that users who have accessed Starlink outside of authorized places for over two months should change your account country or return to the country in which your service was ordered, or else their service would be cut off, Bloomberg reported.

The notice also comes as, SpaceX is reportedly close to a licensing deal to provide Starlink in Yemen. SpaceX, Starlinks parent company, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Humanitarian organizations in Sudan told Bloomberg they have asked that Starlinks services not be cut off in the country amid the war.

We have contacted Starlink in order to consider the situation in Sudan and not cut services, Hadreen, a local charity, told Bloomberg. The majority of the emergency rooms, the public kitchens and thousands of people are using Starlink internet to survive.

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Elon Musk's Starlink satellite internet terminals keep working in places they're not supposed to - Quartz