Tesla CEO Elon Musk has gutted the part of Tesla responsible for building electric vehicle charging stations, sowing uncertainty about the future of the largest and most reliable U.S. charging network.

The layoffs of about 500 Tesla employees this week raised questions about deals that Musk struck with the leaders of General Motors, Ford and other automakers last year allowing cars made by other companies to use Tesla Supercharger stations.

Tesla’s agreements with other makers of electric cars assured buyers that they would be able to find fast chargers on road trips, addressing one of the main reasons that many people are hesitant to buy such cars.

It was also seen as a coup for Musk, validating Tesla’s technology and giving the company outsize influence over the auto industry.

Almost all major manufacturers announced plans to switch the hardware and software in their cars to make them compatible with Tesla’s chargers. Ford has been mailing adapters to owners of its older EVs so they can connect to Tesla’s chargers.

Musk said on X, the social platform he owns, that Tesla would slow down construction of new charging stations and increase its “focus on 100% uptime and expansion of existing locations.”

On Monday, in an email to employees that was reviewed by The New York Times, Musk said he would dissolve the “entire group of approximately 500 people” that had worked on building new Supercharger stations.

In that message, he said the company would finish stations under construction and build some new ones “where critical.”

The dismissal of the Supercharger team caught many people off guard.

Andrés Pinter, whose company installs chargers for Tesla, said he was stunned Tuesday to learn about the layoffs, which included about 20 people he had been in touch with on construction projects. He said emails to those Tesla employees had bounced back with an automated message saying those addresses were no longer valid.

“I see this as a shocking reversal from going all-in on the Supercharger network,” said Pinter, who is co-CEO of Bullet EV Charging Solutions, which is based in Austin, Texas, where Tesla also is based. Until Tuesday, Pinter said, Tesla had been pushing Bullet to expand into other states and move as fast possible.

Tesla did not reply to a request for comment.

A spokesperson for Ford, Martin Günsberg, said that company’s plans had not changed.

Numerous laid-off Tesla employees discussed the job cuts publicly.

Musk “has let our entire charging org go,” William Navarro Jameson, a senior manager at Tesla’s charging operation, said on X. “What this means for the charging network, NACS, and all the exciting work we were doing across the industry, I don’t yet know.”

NACS, or the North American Charging Standard, was developed by Tesla and has a reputation for being a reliable and easy-to-use charging technology.