Tesla formally introduced Tom Zhu’s new place in a current SEC submitting. Tom Zhu is listed as Tesla’s Senior Vice President of Automotive below Govt Officers, a big function for the previous Giga Shanghai CEO.
Zhu has been with Tesla since 2014 and is credited with the success of Giga Shanghai and Tesla’s market place in China. He has been rumored to be Elon Musk’s alternative for a while, particularly since his abrupt transfer from China to america and subsequent appointment to supervise Tesla’s world manufacturing.
Tesla additionally filed an replace to its govt checklist making Zhu one of many firm’s high 4 executives. In keeping with the announcement, Zhu’s duties will now be restricted to Tesla’s automotive division which implies he is not going to be concerned within the firm’s autonomous driving or robotics improvement.
“Mr. Zhu joined Tesla in April 2014, and served in varied operational roles earlier than being appointed as Vice President, Larger China, the place he led the development and operations of Gigafactory Shanghai. Mr. Zhu holds a bachelor’s diploma of commerce in info expertise from the Auckland College of Know-how and an M.B.A. from Duke College,” wrote Tesla in its SEC submitting.
Musk has said a number of instances that he’s not one of the best candidate for CEO and would slightly be an engineer. Many critics argue that Musk has taken on an excessive amount of with the current Twitter acquisition. The appointment of Tom Zhu shall be interpreted as an try to alleviate Elon Musk of a few of his duties.