Elon Musk says Tesla still committed to Supercharger network as BP wants to take over and cables keep being cut

Elon Musk got Tesla in hot water recently by firing the whole team responsible for the expansion and development of its Superchargers, with the goal to focus on uptime and upgrades.

He was quickly forced into explanation mode what a slowdown would mean, and had to clarify that Tesla will still invest $500 million in the growth of its Supercharger network this year.

"That’s just on new sites and expansions, not counting operations costs, which are much higher," he added.

The cost to maintain the sprawling Supercharger network must have been one of the reasons for slowing down its expansion significantly with the hope that others, including the government, may pick up the slack.

Just in the past week, a number of Supercharger stations in Texas saw their cables cut, for instance. Local authorities are still investigating whether the Supercharger stations have been rendered inoperable by anti-EV vandals, or simply by copper cable thieves taking a risk.

Tesla apparently thinks that those hundreds of millions it spends on station upkeep are enough for now, and others can chip in, given that it open-sourced its North American Charging Standard (NACS) system for everyone to use.

BP, in particular, reported that it is looking to hire the EV charging talent from Tesla. It also wants Supercharger property and permit holders to call if their Tesla emails keep bouncing, as has been happening lately.

The CEO of BP's charging division even went as far as directly urging Tesla's "stranded real estate partners who are looking for someone to call" to get in touch as BP is "aggressively looking to acquire real estate to scale our network, which is a heightened focus following the recent Tesla announcement."

BP has earmarked $1 billion for EV charging network expansion and last year bought $100 million worth of Superchargers from Tesla, which it will start deploying this year.

It plans to install 3,000 EV charging stations in the US, so Tesla's next Supercharger strategy may involve similar partnerships where it lets someone else share the operational costs.

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