Tesla

Roger Garbow drove his Hyundai Ioniq 5 over 600 miles around New York's Finger Lakes. Tesla's Supercharger network made the trip possible. That same network was nearly dismantled by its own CEO less than two years ago. The Trip That Almost Wasn't Possible Garbow, president of Full Throttle Marketing in Ridgefield, Connecticut, posted about the trip on LinkedIn yesterda. "My wife and I just finished a delightful 600+ mile road trip in our Ioniq 5 up and around the NY Finger Lakes," he wrote. "Having access to Tesla's Supercharger network was a real game changer for a trip like this, one that we probably would not have attempted previously with the limited other charging options available."

He's right about the timing. Hyundai Ioniq 5 owners only gained free access to Tesla Superchargers starting April 7, 2025, when the company began shipping NACS adapters to eligible customers. A trip like Garbow's simply wasn't practical much before that. One Comment Changed the Whole Story Jamie Kitman, president of Octane Film Cars, replied to Garbow's post with a single line: "One of the best things Musk ever did. Strange that he laid off the whole department." That's not a throwaway comment. It's a real, documented event most readers scrolling past a happy road-trip post have never heard about.

What Actually Happened to the Supercharger Team On April 29, 2024, Elon Musk laid off nearly the entire Supercharger team, roughly 500 employees, the group responsible for building and running the exact network Garbow used on his trip. The move stunned the EV industry. Multiple automakers had just spent months signing agreements to adopt Tesla's charging standard, betting their own customers would get access to a stable, well-run network. Two weeks later, facing backlash across the industry, Tesla reversed course. The company began rehiring key staff, including Max de Zegher, the director of charging for North America, and Musk pledged over $500 million to keep expanding the network that year.

According to Bloomberg , Tesla began hiring back Supercharger staff "just a few weeks after Elon Musk sacked the entire team." Why This Matters for Every Non-Tesla EV Owner Garbow's trip worked because two separate things had to go right: Tesla had to keep the network running, and Hyundai had to build a way for its cars to use it. Hyundai's rollout wasn't instant either. The 2025 Ioniq 5 became one of the first non-Tesla EVs with a native NACS port, giving direct, adapter-free access to Tesla's network. Earlier Ioniq 5 model years still need a physical CCS-to-NACS adapter, and some owners have found those adapter cables too short to comfortably reach their charge port at certain stations.

Even with the hardware sorted out, real-world charging speed isn't guaranteed. One Ioniq 6 owner drove over 3,000 miles and reported Tesla Superchargers "slowed things up a bit" compared to Hyundai's own advertised charging curve, a reminder that adapter access and matching charging speed are two different promises. A Fragile Kind of Infrastructure Garbow's trip is a genuinely good news story. It's also a reminder that the infrastructure behind it isn't as permanent as it looks from the driver's seat. A single executive decision came within weeks of eliminating the team responsible for keeping thousands of Superchargers running nationwide.

The rehiring happened fast enough that most drivers never noticed the gap. That's not a guarantee it won't happen again. Would You Trust an EV Road Trip to Someone Else's Charging Network?