Tom Zhu becomes second in charge at Tesla after Elon Musk

03 January 2023

Tom Zhu, Tesla's China chief, has been promoted, so now he'll be overseeing the company's assembly plants in the United States, as well as sales operations in North America and Europe.

According to an internal posting by Tesla obtained by Reuters, Tom Zhu's responsibilities as the company's most senior executive for sales in the rest of Asia are still under his purview as of Tuesday. The posting also revealed that Zhu's position as vice president for Greater China has not been altered in any way.

As a result of this shift, Tom Zhu will now have direct control over deliveries in most of Tesla's main markets and operations at its key manufacturing hubs. The exception is the Berlin facility, which will fall under the reporting line for Joe Ward. This change elevates Zhu to the position of highest-profile official at Tesla, second only to Chief Executive Elon Musk.

Tom Zhu will be taking over leadership of Tesla's main production centers as the company prepares to release its Cybertruck and an updated version of its Model 3 sedan.

Tom Zhu's new reporting lines will allow Tesla's car design and development, to remain distinct and directly reach the CEO, while also providing a deputy to Musk on the more immediate issues of managing global sales and production.

Tom Zhu and a team of his were brought on by Tesla at the end of the previous year to address production challenges in the United States. Tom Zhu's appointment to a global role at Tesla comes at a time when Elon Musk has been occupied with his acquisition of Twitter, drawing heavy criticism for his heavy-handed approach at the social network, but also from Tesla shareholders who believed he lost focus.

On Monday, Tesla announced that it had delivered record 405,278 cars in the fourth quarter. However, this number still fell short of the expectations of Wall Street analysts.

Tom Zhu, who was born in China but now holds a passport from New Zealand, started working at Tesla in 2014. Before that, he was a project manager for a company founded by his MBA classmates at Duke University, which provided consulting services to Chinese contractors working on infrastructure projects in Africa.

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