Tesla's 'home-grown' Cybertruck boss leaves as program sputters
Tesla's Cybertruck program has lost its leader. Siddhant Awasthi, the head of the Cybertruck program, announced he is leaving the electric car maker after more than eight years. Awasthi, who was also put in charge of the Model 3 program last year, called the move "one of the hardest decisions of my life" in a post on the social media platform X. His departure comes at a difficult time for the angular electric pickup truck and for Tesla, which has seen a number of high-level employees leave recently.
The Cybertruck itself has faced a rocky road. Despite a flashy launch and years of hype, the truck has struggled to find buyers. Tesla is reportedly having trouble selling just 25,000 Cybertrucks per year - a number that represents 10% of the company's ambitious original plans. The massive gap between that goal and today's sales numbers points to a giant miscalculation of the market and a product that isn't anywhere near what was initially promised.
Awasthi's career at Tesla is a perfect example of the company's unique and often unusual approach to building its leadership. For the last five years, Tesla has almost entirely stopped hiring big-name executives from other companies. Instead, it follows a strict "promote from within" policy. This means Tesla finds promising young engineers inside its own walls and trusts them with huge projects. Awasthi was the poster child for this strategy.
His rise inside the electric car company was incredibly fast. Awasthi started as an intern and joined Tesla full-time in 2018, right out of school. Within just two years, he was an engineering manager. A year later, he was a senior manager responsible for a critical piece of the Cybertruck: its new 48-volt electrical system. By late 2022, before he even turned 30, Tesla made him the head of the entire Cybertruck program, responsible for getting the truck into production. This kind of rapid promotion is almost unheard of at any other major automaker.
In his departure announcement, Awasthi summed up his "thrilling journey" at the EV maker. He mentioned "ramping up Model 3, working on Giga Shanghai, developing new electronics... and delivering the once-in-a-lifetime Cybertruck." Last summer, Tesla added even more to his plate, making him the head of the Model 3 program as well. This gave one young engineer control over both the company's troubled new product and one of its most important and successful electric cars.
Awasthi's decision to leave follows a major wave of layoffs at Tesla last year. In the time since, many other managers and engineers have also left the company, leading some to call it a "talent exodus." Tesla has recently reorganized its vehicle programs, and the departure of the man in charge of two of its key cars, especially the struggling Cybertruck, raises new questions about stability at the world's most-watched EV company.
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