According to foreign media reports, on June 26, people familiar with the matter revealed that Tesla executive and Musk’s long-time confidant Omead Afshar has resigned from the company. This is Tesla facing the worldElectric vehicleAt a time when market demand is weak, there is another personnel change in core executives.
Afshar previously worked in Tesla’s CEO’s office and has been responsible for the company’s sales and manufacturing operations in Europe and North America since last year. Since joining Tesla in 2017, he has quickly become Musk’s right-hand man, playing a central role in major projects such as the Gigafactory in Texas.
The source did not disclose the specific circumstances or reasons for Afshar’s departure.
Image credit: Tesla
Earlier this week, Afshar was still posting about Tesla on the X platform (formerly Twitter), and as of June 25, his X and LinkedIn profiles still show an active status.
Last Sunday, Tesla deployed self-driving taxis in Austin, Texas. On Monday, Afshar posted on the X platform that the release of the driverless taxi service was “Tesla’s moment in history” and thanked Musk: “Thank you for inspiring us to keep breaking through!” ”
Previously, Afshar had repeatedly posted about his experience of spending holidays and working late at night with Musk, especially in 2018, when Tesla made every effort to improve the mass-market model Model 3yieldDuration. He recalled in a post in March: “It was really 24 hours a day to eat and live in the factory. ”
Afshar’s departure comes at a time when Tesla’s models in the European and American markets are lagging behind in product iteration, facing the impact of more affordable alternatives launched by competitors, and demand continues to decline. Two people familiar with Tesla’s operations said that executives such as Afshar took on more responsibilities during Musk’s focus on the Trump administration’s affairs this year.
Matthew LaBrot, a former Tesla mid-level sales manager who was recently fired for publicly criticizing Musk, said Afshar had previously been a “core member” of the company close to Musk until he was promoted to head of sales and manufacturing operations in North America and Europe. He added that there is a lot of pressure within the company to deal with the decline in sales, especially in the European market.
Bloomberg News was the first to report on Afshar’s departure and mentioned that Jenna Ferrua, Tesla’s director of human resources for North America, has also left. One source pointed out that Afshar and Ferrua were close colleagues, so it was not surprising that the two left at the same time, while another said that Ferrua was Afshar’s direct human resources consultant.
The departure is the epitome of a series of Tesla executive departures over the past 14 months. Affected by the company’s overall restructuring, Tesla has laid off thousands of employees and shifted its focus to AI-driven autonomous driving technology and humanoid robots.
Recent Tesla executives have left the company including heads of robotics, batteries and public policy: Milan Kovac, head of the Optimus humanoid robot team, announced his departure this month, and Vineet Mehta, a battery business executive, left in May; Drew Baglino, Chief Battery Engineer, Rebecca Tinucci, Head of Supercharging, and Rohan Patel, Head of Global Public Policy, all left in the spring of 2024.
Musk has led the Trump administration’s cost-cutting plan this year, and many investors and analysts are worried that the move will distract him from Tesla’s management efforts and lead to the loss of some potential buyers.
Musk’s end of his work in the Trump administration in late May has eased investors’ concerns about brand damage to some extent. However, Tesla’s stock price is still down about 19% this year — although the market optimistically expected at the beginning of the year that Trump’s victory would clear regulatory barriers for Tesla’s self-driving taxis.
