If you visited Elon Musk's X on Saturday and clicked on Governor Gavin Newsom's press office account, you could keep an eye on it walk up to a Tesla charging station, get out of an electric Ford Mustang Mach-E, and announce that Tesla Superchargers were now open to non-Tesla electric vehicles.
It is a questionable statement. Owners of electric Fords, Chevys, BMWs, Mercedes-Benz, Lucids, Nissans, Rivians and the rest can't count on it yet.
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Two days after Newsom's video, on Monday, news broke that the Tesla Supercharger network was in disarray. Musk, according to multiple media reports and social media posts, had fired or fired his entire Supercharger team, including his senior director, Rebecca Tinucci.
A source, who did not want to be named for fear of retaliation from Musk, told The Times: “They didn't fire the entire Supercharger team. They were mainly involved in site acquisition, project management, marketing and a few other things.”
Whatever the damage, Musk did not deny it. but he did publish in X that Tesla plans to slow the growth of new Supercharger stations and focus on the stations it already has.
Meanwhile, electric vehicle sales figures in California were released on Monday, which were dismal, especially for Tesla, whose new registrations in California decreased by 7.8% in the first quarter of the year, after a drop of 9.8% % the previous quarter.
Sales for California's overall electric vehicle market grew in the first quarter: by 555 cars. The increase to 90,296 cars and light trucks, from 89,741, was less than 1%, a hair off the plateau, according to the California New Car Dealers Association. Electric vehicle market share also remained broadly stable, declining slightly from 21.2% of all new vehicles sold in the fourth quarter of last year to 20.9% in the first quarter of this year.
This spells bad news for EV advocates and for Newsom, who in 2020 ordered that all new car sales by 2035 must be what the state calls zero-emission vehicles. (Plug-in hybrid cars burn fossil fuels and therefore produce emissions, but because they can also run solely on batteries, California includes them in its definition. Up to 20% of new cars sold in 2035 may be plug-in hybrids.)
Under the mandate, automakers will have to sell such vehicles, but customers will not have to buy them. If the flat growth of electric vehicles becomes a trend rather than an aberration, that could undermine a key pillar in the state's plan for a cleaner climate.
“Everything from interest rates to inflation to increased awareness of the costs and challenges of electric vehicles has negatively impacted demand for electric vehicles,” said Karl Brauer, industry analyst at iSeeCars.com. “Even Tesla, the brand long seen as a shining example of how every automaker should approach personal transportation, now looks a lot like a traditional automaker, with shrinking market share, stagnant sales, profits in decline and massive layoffs.”
One of the reasons potential EV buyers give for sticking with gasoline is that public chargers subsidized by the state and federal government are too few and unreliable. Tesla chargers are generally considered more reliable. They were built with money contributed by the very high value of Tesla shares. Early last year, Tesla agreed to open its charger network in exchange for federal subsidies to help pay for Tesla's planned but now scaled-down charger expansion.
It's unclear why the governor released his video when he did. Tesla itself has not made any recent announcements regarding access to non-Tesla chargers. The company began opening some stations for other brands in California and other states more than a year ago, in March 2023. The Times asked a spokesperson for Newsom what actual news was announced, but has not yet heard back.
Intentionally or not, the announcement generated some misunderstandings in the media. Erroneous headlines began to appear, such as “Tesla Superchargers in California Now Available for All Electric Vehicles.”
Here’s what Newsom said: “Today we announced that Tesla is opening its charging network to additional models of electric vehicles. “All of this is in an effort to build infrastructure in the state of California that currently totals 105,000 electric vehicle chargers for public use and around 10,000 of these supercharging stations.”
No additional new models had been added. A quick read might lead us to believe that all Tesla stations are now available to EV drivers who don't drive Teslas. But the real number is much less than that. Tesla knows how many, but the company does not respond to media inquiries.
The State itself does not know.
“We don't have specific numbers on how many are open to other drivers at this time,” said Lindsay Buckley of the California Energy Commission, the state agency in charge of electric vehicle infrastructure. “I understand that the implementation will be gradual. Select chargers are now open to Ford and Rivian drivers. The plan is to soon open the door to GM, Polestar and Volvo.”
Tesla divides its chargers into three types. One is only for Tesla drivers. Another is for drivers of electric vehicles whose brands have been approved by Tesla. A third, very limited in number currently, can handle almost all EVs with a built-in adapter called Magic Dock that allows the Tesla charger plug to fit a non-Tesla EV.
A look at the Supercharger location map on Tesla's website shows that sites open to other brands are still in the minority. In the Palm Springs-Coachella area, there are five Tesla stations. Two of them will accept Ford or Rivian. There are no magic docks.
Between Culver City and Santa Monica there are six Tesla stations. Only two are open to Ford and Rivian. No magic springs.
According to Tesla's map, there are three Magic Dock stations throughout California: two near Sacramento and one in Silicon Valley.
Why the incompatibility? The auto industry developed a plug and charger standard that Tesla did not follow. The Tesla version is smaller, lighter and easier to handle. Some other brands have created snap-on adapters to give as gifts or sell to their customers to access the Supercharger. Several, including Ford, have announced that future electric vehicles will be built to accept Tesla plugs without the need for adapters.
A Ford spokesperson relayed the company's reaction to the Supercharger layoffs: “Our plans for our customers do not change.” When asked if management turmoil at Tesla and Musk's announcement of slower Supercharger growth had made the company think better, the spokesperson declined further comment.
Some EV advocates looked for the silver lining. When asked about the Tesla Supercharger layoffs, Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator CEO Matt Petersen said: “While it is concerning, if there is a silver lining, it is that many great, talented people are available to other companies in the chargers space”.
