Achi news desk-
Tesla will spend more than US$500 million this year to expand its fast charging network, CEO Elon Musk said on Friday, days after suddenly laying off employees who ran the business.
“Just to reiterate: Tesla will spend well over US$500M expanding our Supercharger network to create thousands of NEW chargers this year,” Musk said in a post on his X social media platform.
“That’s only on new sites and expansions, not counting operations costs, which are much higher,” he said.
After the layoffs last week, Musk said Tesla plans to expand the Supercharger network but more slowly for new locations.
EV makers have been adopting Tesla’s North American Charging Standard, bringing the company’s superchargers closer to becoming the industry standard at the expense of the competing Combined Charging System.
However, Musk’s decision to gut the electric vehicle charging team scrambles plans for the introduction of new fast charging stations and could delay President Joe Biden’s efforts to electrify US highways.
The Biden administration has distributed $5 billion to states over five years to build 500,000 electric vehicle chargers as part of the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program, and Tesla has been among the biggest winners of those federal funds so far.
(Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D’Silva and Arun Koyyur)
