Electric vehicle giant Tesla has just lost another executive, the head of Cybertruck manufacturing, amid its global workforce reduction.
Ongoing layoffs
Tesla confirmed its plans to lay off 10% of its global workforce. However, Electrek claims that the actual rate would reach as much as 20% when Tesla officially completes the job cuts.
Numerous high-ranking Tesla officials have left the electric automaker since the announcement. Chief Executive Elon Musk also dismissed the entire Supercharger team and its Senior Director, Rebecca Tinucci.
It also lost New Vehicles Program Head Daniel Ho and the employees under his leadership on May 7, 2024.
Before that, Powertrain and Energy Engineers SVP Drew Baglino and Public Policy and Business Development VP Rohan Patel already departed from the automaker.
Now, Tesla’s head of Cybertruck manufacturing is also leaving the electric automaker.
Announcement
Gigafactory Texas Director of Manufacturing Engineering Renjie Zhu formally announced his exit on LinkedIn on Monday, marking the latest executive to depart from Tesla.
<iframe src=”https://www.linkedin.com/embed/feed/update/urn:li:share:7195200849273401345″ height=”829″ width=”504″ frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen=”” title=”Embedded post”></iframe>
“After triumphing the epic launch of Cybertruck program and ramping the volume production line to the steady 1K/W throughput orbit for the past 16 months in GFTX, also 7 weeks after the 5th Tesla-versary, my adventure with this great company has come to an end. It has been great honour and pleasure working with those most talented yet super diligent colleagues, as well as all of our amazing vendor partners, either back in Shanghai or here in Austin.”
Renjie Zhu, Gigafactory Texas Director of Manufacturing Engineering
Zhu has served as Tesla’s head of Cybertruck manufacturing since January 2023. He supervised the launch and production ramp-up of the company’s first electric pickup, Cybertruck.
The former Director of Manufacturing Engineering at Gigafactory Texas hinted at starting a “new journey” in the LinkedIn post, such as “Falcon 9 back to the base to refuel and prepare for next launch.” However, he omitted to disclose more specific details about his future plans.
“Every single day in the past 5 years we brought the world a little closer to the transition to sustainable energy, not just with our incredible products Model 3/Model Y/Cybertruck, but the innovative ways in which we built those high volume production lines with unprecedentedly high efficiency and delivered the products to our customers with impeccable quality.
Everyone actively involved in these cheerful accomplishments feels the fundamental changes we brought to the automobile manufacturing industry since the start of the legendary GFSH in 2019. I’m so grateful that I had the chance of playing a big part in it with y’all!”
Renjie Zhu, Gigafactory Texas Director of Manufacturing Engineering
Zhu’s background
Engineer Renjie Zhu worked at Tesla for five years in Texas and in China.
Before leading Giga Texas manufacturing engineering, Zhu first served Giga Shanghai from February 2021 to December 2022. At the time, he oversaw the production operations of Tesla Model 3 and Model Y in the Chinese factory.
However, Zhu officially started his career at Giga Shanghai in March 2019 to establish the site’s body-in-white (BIW) manufacturing team.
It remains vague if Renjie Zhu left Tesla on his own accord or if he was among the employees affected by the ongoing layoffs. Recent reports suggest that some employees decided to leave Tesla due to low morale amid the job cuts.
It would be interesting to see how Renjie Zhu’s departure would affect the Tesla Cybertruck’s production ramp. Tesla successfully achieved a production rate of 1,000 units in a week just last month. It aims to hit a 5,000/week production in H1 2025.
In separate news, Tesla Chief reassigned Tom Zhu to China to lead the automaker’s operations there instead of in North America.
