The end of EV range anxiety: Tesla to spend over $500 million on charger network this year, Musk insists - days after FIRING staff working on it

Elon Musk has said Tesla will spend more than $500 million developing the company's fast-charging network this year, just days after firing the entire team working on it.

Musk claimed in a post to X on Friday that the money would be spent establishing new 'Supercharger' sites around the country.

'Just to reiterate: Tesla will spend well over $500M expanding our Supercharger network to create thousands of NEW chargers this year,' he wrote.

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

Musk has said Tesla will spend more than $500 million developing the company's fast-charging network this year

After laying off Tesla's entire EV charging team, Musk claimed Tesla will still be able to deliver stations but at a slower pace

Tesla's EV charging network is the largest in the country and received investment from the Biden administration of more than $5 billion, intended to boost the popularity and convenience of electric cars.

The most common reason cited by Americans for not going electric is 'range anxiety', which is the fear of a lack of charging stations and that the battery will run out of charge during a trip.

Now, Tesla's North American Charging Standard (NACS) system is used widely by other automakers like General Motors and Ford.

Tesla has already installed more than 2,200 stations in the US and previously planned to have tens of thousands by 2030.

Earlier this week, a stir was caused after the company abruptly laid off all members of its EV charging team, including the executives who were overseeing its adoption by the industry.

Among them was the head of the business, Rebecca Tinucci, sowing uncertainty about the future of its network.

EV experts and officials told DailyMail.com that Tesla backing out of its agreements could simply open a doorway for other companies to step in.

In the wake of the layoffs, BP's EV charging unit indicated it was looking to expand in the US.

Tesla has more than 2,000 Supercharger stations in the US and Musk has reiterated plans to open more despite the layoffs

'We are aggressively looking to acquire real estate to scale our network, which is a heightened focus following the recent Tesla announcement,' a spokesperson for the company said in a statement.

But Musk said on X that Tesla was still going to expand the network but 'at a slower pace for new locations and more focus on 100 percent uptime and expansion of existing locations.' 

Uptime is the percentage of time a charger is available for use and therefore telling of a network's overall efficiency.

Tesla's firing of the charging team came soon after it announced company-wide layoffs of around 10 percent of its global workforce.

This year, the company's share price has taken a battering. On Friday it was down some 32 percent year-to-date.