Elon Musk Brings Tesla’s China Chief to Texas to Run Gigafactory
Elon Musk has tapped a longtime Tesla Inc. executive in China who oversaw construction of the Shanghai gigfactory to help run the electric carmaker's newest plant in Austin, Texas, people familiar with the matter said.
Tom Zhu, who joined Tesla in 2014 to help build its Supercharger network and most recently has been heading the carmaker's Asia Pacific operations, is in Austin this week and has brought some of his engineering team from China with him to assist in overseeing the ramp up of Giga Texas — a US hub for the Model Y and future production of the Cybertruck — the people said, asking not to be identified because they're not authorized to speak publicly.
It's not clear how long Zhu will be in Austin for, or whether he will retain his Asia responsibilities, the people said.
Representatives at Tesla in the US and China didn't respond to requests for comment. Zhu wasn't immediately able to be contacted. Musk also didn't respond to messages seeking comment.
The shift of Zhu to Austin comes as Tesla has been trying to increase output at its new Texas factory. The US electric vehicle pioneer originally planned to make Model Y SUVs using its new, larger 4680 lithium-ion cells at the plant, which Musk referred to as a “money furnace” earlier this year. But instead Tesla has pivoted to using older 2170 cells considering the new batteries weren't ready for volume production.
It also comes comes as Musk has been spending time running Twitter Inc. after acquiring the social media platform in late October. He's also chief executive of Space Exploration Technologies Inc., more commonly known as SpaceX, and founded tunneling firm The Boring Co. and brain-chip developer Neuralink Corp.
Musk's $44 billion acquisition of
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