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 employees in Sweden have been on strike, demanding inclusion in a collective settlement.
Tesla has traditionally opposed unions and efficiently resisted unionization at its manufacturing amenities. Initially, this strike in Sweden appeared manageable, involving just a few dozen employees. Nevertheless, Tesla underestimated the power of solidarity amongst Swedish employees.
Whereas the automaker managed to get across the service employees strike, it’s now feeling the impression of “sympathy strikes” from different unions in Sweden.
A number of different unions within the nation, together with port employees, electricians, and cleansing companies that work with Tesla, have refused to cooperate with the corporate in help of the strike.
Now, a kind of sympathy strikes is de facto beginning to trigger bother to Tesla house owners, and different EV house owners.
Union IF Metall used its affect to forestall 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’ve got seen lengthy wait traces at Tesla Superchargers earlier than, however I feel this could 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 present 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 is just not maintaining except Superchargers get energized by the utilities blocking them from getting energized. Tesla Superchargers are vital 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 will even proceed to speculate and construct websites for Swedish EV drivers, together with extra capability in Malung, Käppen, Vansbro, Idre, Särna, and Sunne. We respect the help 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 dealing with rising union pushbacks in Germany.
Electrek’s Take
That’s a bummer. As de Zegher says, wait traces at chargers usually are not an excellent 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, in fact, Tesla blames it on the unions, and the unions blame it on Tesla for not partaking with them.
Can’t we simply all be associates?
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