Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Two senior executives left within half a month

Author | Truman

Tesla, another senior executive left.

This time it's Colin Campbell (Colin Campbell), vice president of powertrain engineering.

He just announced on LinkedIn that he would leave Tesla to join RedWood Materials, a start-up, as chief technology officer.

Prior to that, Colin had worked at Tesla for 17 years, and he became the second senior executive to leave in half a month after Tesla's chief financial officer, Zakary Kirkhorn.

In June, Mustapha El Akkari, Tesla's executive in charge of raw materials procurement for Cybertruck electric pickup trucks, resigned and joined Tesla's competitor Rivian as a senior head of structure and raw materials, responsible for Rivian raw materials procurement.

Tesla's senior management has been changing in the shock all the time.

01. One of Tesla's earliest engineers calculated that it has been 17 years since Colin joined the job and left Tesla, and he is a veritable veteran of Tesla.

When Colin joined Tesla that year, Tesla had not even built a car. In August 2006, Colin joined Tesla as an inverter engineer, and he was also one of Tesla's earliest engineers.

Source: at the time of LinkedIn, Tesla was just a small startup planning to launch Roadster. As Tesla grew from a startup to one of the largest companies in the world, Colin was also promoted in Tesla.

During the seven and a half years from August 2006 to January 2014, Colin held the position of electrical engineer of Tesla traction inverter, his first and longest position in Tesla, and then promoted to Engineering Manager.

Source: in 2016, 10 years after joining Tesla, LinkedIn became Tesla Senior Engineering Director of Power Electronics and was quickly promoted to Senior Director of Powertrain, responsible for the development of all powertrains, including electrical, mechanical and manufacturing engineering for high-power electronics, motors, gearboxes, battery packs and charging systems.

In June 2021, Colin became Tesla's vice president of powertrain engineering until he left this month.

The importance of Colin to Tesla is self-evident. He single-handedly led the team to build Tesla's three-electricity system. The core technologies are all self-developed in the full stack, such as power battery cell, BMS (battery management system), motor, and electronic control technology are still the benchmark of the industry.

When Colin made his debut at Tesla's investor conference in March, Colin, then vice president of powertrain engineering, revealed that Tesla's next generation of permanent magnet motors would not contain any rare earth metals.

Source: Tesla is the phrase that sent the share prices of rare earths around the world plummeting, with MP Materials, the largest US producer of rare earth materials, down 3.2 per cent in after-hours trading.

Colin did not disclose the specific reasons for his departure, and Musk and Tesla did not respond to his departure.

However, it can be seen from Colin's breakup Manifesto that the two sides are at peace.

In LinkedIn, he described his work experience at Tesla as "once in a lifetime".

"as an engineer, I can't sum up how many useful technical challenges I have encountered in building exciting, safe, reliable and cheaper electric cars," he said. With the success of Tesla, we have not only changed global emissions, but also forever influenced the world's perception of transportation and helped shape the product roadmap of almost all other automakers. It's more memorable than I thought. "

And Colin praised Tesla and Musk and other employees, describing them as talented, enthusiastic, determined, friendly and dedicated.

Next stop-while asking former colleague Colin to leave Tesla, he also announced his next stop: Redwood Materials, a power battery recycling start-up in which he will serve as chief technology officer.

Source: Redwood, a battery recycling startup, is not as well-known as Tesla, but it has a close relationship with Tesla.

Headquartered in Carson City, Nevada, Redwood Materials was founded in 2017 by J.B.Straubel, co-founder and former CTO of Tesla, who was then CTO of Tesla.

Source: Redwood until 2019, Straubel was still a member of Tesla's technical committee. In the same year, Straubel left Tesla and began to focus on the development of Redwood.

Redwood's goal is to create a complete closed-loop battery supply chain in which the materials used to produce batteries are recycled and reused to produce new batteries. But their broader goal is to try to create a North American battery supply chain by producing and recycling positive and negative materials.

Source: RedwoodRedwood converts scrapped electric car batteries and waste from car factories into raw materials and components to make new batteries and mixes "sustainable materials" in its manufacturing process.

Since its inception, Redwood has been supported by major investors, including asset management companies T Rowe Price, Baillie Gifford and Fidelity. Several of the company's existing investors will also participate in new financing activities, according to people familiar with the matter.

Redwood raised more than $700 million in 2021 at a valuation of $3.7 billion and received a conditional commitment of $2 billion in loans from the U.S. Department of Energy earlier this year.

Source: in addition to the founder of Redwood, who has a close relationship with Tesla, there are many employees who, like Colin, are job-hopping from Tesla.

Another Redwood executive, Kevin Kassekert, head of operations, was vice president of personnel and position for Tesla. According to LinkedIn, since leaving Tesla, more than 120 people are currently working at Redwood.

Source: Redwood what is more interesting is that at Tesla's shareholders' meeting in May this year, J.B.Straubel was also elected as a member of Tesla's board of directors and was elected as an independent director of the board of directors by Tesla's shareholders.

Walking around, J.B.Straubel returned to Tesla.

Obviously, there is a close relationship between Redwood and Tesla. It is reported that last year, Redwood officially announced that its Battery Materials Campus 1 facility in northern Nevada would provide recycled battery materials for Tesla Gigafactory Nevada.

Source: some people on Twitter speculated that Tesla might buy Redwood in the future to improve the battery supply chain market in North America.

So what can Colin do when he goes to Redwood?

Colin said the Redwood would continue to work on electrification, "but this time, by addressing upstream problems, ensure widespread use of electric vehicles and clean energy."

"I am humble and excited to join, learn, lead and develop a team that, although it is still in its infancy, has achieved so much! the team is innovating in the fields of chemistry, mechanical, electrical and systems engineering." 'The future of Redwood is very exciting, 'Colin wrote on LinkedIn.

As long as Mr Musk left before Mr Colin left, Tesla had just undergone an important personnel shake-up earlier this month when chief financial officer Zachary Kirkhorn left and was replaced by chief accounting officer Vaibhav Taneja.

You know, Kirkhorn, one of Tesla's top four executives and Tesla's second-in-command, was once considered a potential successor to Musk.

Source: within half a month of Tesla, two senior executives have left one after another. Although they both left respectfully, it still makes people wonder what happened inside Tesla.

Some people suspected that they had made mistakes in their work and were fired.

But this is obviously not true.

Just like CFO Kirkhorn, who performed numerous meritorious deeds during his 13 years with Tesla, Tesla could burn more than $1 billion in a single quarter and lose money for a long time before he took over as CFO in 2019.

But since taking office, Tesla has become profitable and has repaid about $10 billion in debt over the past three years, earning an investment grade rating, and Tesla joined the S & P 500 in December 2020.

Tesla's market capitalization was about $50 billion when he first started at CFO. Now it is more than $700 billion.

Source: during Tesla Kirkhorn's tenure at CFO, Tesla not only made 15 consecutive quarters of profits and accumulated $22 billion in reserves, but Tesla's ratio of sales and administrative expenses to income (a measure of efficiency) also dropped from 13% in 2018 to about 5% last year.

As for Colin, as one of the earliest engineers of Tesla, his professional ability is beyond doubt.

From this point of view, it may be a difference in ideas.

According to many media reports, Musk often dismisses senior executives at a time of disagreement. A former employee of Tesla once revealed that Musk is extremely strict with his subordinates, even the "elders" who have made important contributions to the company.

In fact, the sudden departure of Tesla, the world's fastest-growing car company, has often happened over the years, from senior technicians to Musk's secretary to ordinary employees.

But there is only one person whose status in Tesla has never changed, and that is Musk.

Source: Ryan Popple, former chief financial officer of Tesla, says Tesla has grown on such an amazing scale thanks to Mr Musk, who insisted on perfection and was forced to have people solve all technical problems. But he also said that this attitude can also make the work and life of employees more difficult.

But these are all speculation, and both Colin and Kirkhorn expressed their gratitude to Tesla and Musk when they left, saying they had a special time at Tesla.

However, for Tesla, senior executives leave frequently and must be adjusted in time. If a company wants to expand at a high speed, it must have stable management.

Of course, for Tesla, as long as Musk is still there, many problems may not be a problem.

This article is from the official account of Wechat: Super Electric Lab (ID:SuperEV-Lab). Author: Truman.

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