Tesla drivers in Sweden are caught in wait traces at Superchargers stations. Tesla blames union strikes stopping them from connecting their new stations to the grid.
For greater than a yr now, Tesla service staff in Sweden have been on strike, demanding inclusion in a collective settlement.
Tesla has traditionally opposed unions and efficiently resisted unionization at its manufacturing services. Initially, this strike in Sweden appeared manageable, involving just a few dozen staff. Nonetheless, Tesla underestimated the power of solidarity amongst Swedish staff.
Whereas the automaker managed to get across the service staff strike, it’s now feeling the affect of “sympathy strikes” from different unions in Sweden.
A number of different unions within the nation, together with port staff, electricians, and cleansing providers that work with Tesla, have refused to cooperate with the corporate in assist of the strike.
Now, a kind of sympathy strikes is absolutely beginning to trigger hassle to Tesla house owners, and different EV house owners.
Union IF Metall used its affect to stop Tesla from powering new Supercharger stations to place strain to convey them to the negotiation desk, and throughout the holidays, it’s leading to extraordinarily lengthy traces on the working Supercharger stations, as some posted on X (Nicklas Nilsso):
We now have seen lengthy wait traces at Tesla Superchargers earlier than, however I believe this is likely to be the longest I’ve ever seen.
The identical Tesla proprietor posted a neighborhood Supercharger map that confirmed that the overwhelming majority of stations within the nation at the moment required wait occasions to entry a charger:
Max de Zegher, Tesla’s head of charging, commented on the scenario and blamed the union strikes for stopping over 100 new Superchargers from being energized:
A kind of “sympathy strikes” is getting fairly impactful As forecasted, Swedish EV drivers are struggling and EV infrastructure will not be maintaining until Superchargers get energized by the utilities blocking them from getting energized. Tesla Superchargers are crucial infrastructure, particularly for peak journey days like this. 100+ stalls in Sweden would have been energized this winter, if it wasn’t for sympathy strikes.
He added that there’s “no clear path” to fixing the scenario:
Regardless of no clear path but to getting turned on, we may also proceed to take a position and construct websites for Swedish EV drivers, together with extra capability in Malung, Käppen, Vansbro, Idre, Särna, and Sunne. We respect the assist from the general public to assist us get Superchargers energized asap. Ready in line like that is tremendous painful, hurts EV adoption and completely fixable!
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has taken a tough line towards unions and proven unwillingness to barter with them.
The automaker can also be going through rising union pushbacks in Germany.
Electrek’s Take
That’s a bummer. As de Zegher says, wait traces at chargers usually are not an incredible search for EVs. The excellent news is that most individuals know the rationale for this drawback on this particular case is that this union dispute somewhat than an precise drawback with EVs.
Now, after all, Tesla blames it on the unions, and the unions blame it on Tesla for not participating with them.
Can’t we simply all be pals?
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