Bloomberg reports that the most high profile returnee is the director of charging for North America Max de Zegher. There is no word on whether former senior director of EV charging Rebecca Tinucci has returned.
The disbanding of the Supercharger team shook the EV charging sector and left question marks over who would now operate the extensive Tesla EV charging network, and what would happen to the extensive funding from the Biden administration's US$5bn NEVI (National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure) program that Tesla has been awarded to develop EV charging infrastructure in the US.
bp has been reported to be targeting the Tesla US charging network via its bp pulse operation. A bp spokesperson said in a statement last week: "We are aggressively looking to acquire real estate to scale our network, which is a heightened focus following the recent Tesla announcement."
Musk has continued to make positive noises about Tesla's EV charging infrastructure plans, despite the dismissal of the Supercharger team. On May 10 he stated on his x/Twitter account: "Just to reiterate: Tesla will spend well over $500M expanding our Supercharger network to create thousands of NEW chargers this year.
"That’s just on new sites and expansions, not counting operations costs, which are much higher."
