BP pulse, the fossil fuel giant’s EV charging division, is asking property owners left in the dark by Elon Musk firing Tesla’s charging team to give them a call as it plans to scoop up some of the sites.
Last week, Elon Musk fired Tesla’s entire charging team to make a statement against the head of the team who was pushing back against layoffs.
We reported that the move resulted in Tesla backing out of leases on planned Supercharger stations and a lot of confusion amongst its partners in ongoing projects.
While this undoubtedly will result in Tesla’s slowing down its charging station deployment, it is an opportunity for other companies.
Sujay Sharma, chief executive officer of bp pulse Americas, said in an interview with Bloomberg that site owners that were working with Tesla before should come:
“If there are stranded real estate partners who are looking for someone to call, they should feel free to pick up the phone and call me or look me up on LinkedIn.”
BP is also looking to scoop former Tesla charging employees.
Last year, Tesla sold $100 million worth of white-label Supercharger hardware to BP.
Electrek’s Take
As I said on the podcast last week, the only not-too-bad outcome to Elon firing Tesla’s charging team is if the workers get quickly scooped up by other companies looking to heavily invest in charging electric vehicles.
Those employees can bring back some of their projects that Tesla dropped, but even then, it will undoubtedly slow down EV charging deployment, especially in North America. It could potentially come back up after all those employees are settled.
Tesla could also sell BP more Supercharger hardware – though Tinnuci’s team was in charge of that too.
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