Tesla Promotes Key Executives And Gives Them More Responsibilities In Leadership Shuffle

Several Tesla Inc. TSLA executives, including Wes Morrill, Milan Kovac, and Ashok Elluswamy, have received promotions over the past few weeks, according to reports and LinkedIn updates.

What Happened: Omead Afshar is now a vice president in charge of sales and manufacturing with senior executives in North America and Europe reporting to him, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the changes. Afshar has also reportedly assumed responsibilities formerly held by senior leader Tom Zhu, the report said.

According to Afshar’s LinkedIn profile, he previously worked in the Office of the CEO at Tesla. However, since July 2020, his role at the company is depicted as an emoji donning a cowboy hat, a job description he has also provided on social media platform X. However, Afshar is one of the select few Tesla-affiliated individual profiles on the social media platform.

Another senior executive Ashok Elluswamy, meanwhile, has been promoted from Director of Autopilot Software to Vice President of AI software this month, according to his LinkedIn profile. Elluswamy did not post about the promotion but instead updated his job profile.

Milan Kovac, who was Director of Optimus and Autopilot Engineering, has been promoted to Vice President of Optimus, the executive noted on his LinkedIn profile.

Wes Morrill, who was Cybertruck’s lead engineer, is now Senior Director of Engineering- Reliability, Test, and Analysis, according to the exec’s Linkedin. Morrill assumed the new role in September.

Tesla laid off several employees earlier this year and several senior executives left the company including then Senior Director of Charging Infrastructure Rebecca Tinucci, AI Manager Paril Jain, Director of New Product Introduction Daniel Ho, Senior Vice President of Powertrain and Energy Engineering Drew Baglino, and Vice President of Public Policy and Business Development Rohan Patel.

Since then, the company’s leadership and teams have undergone some major restructuring.

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