Following Tesla director James Murdoch’s testimony in court last month that Elon Musk had identified a potential new CEO for the company, PingWest’s latest report follows who will get the job. Tom Zhu Xiaotong claims to be.
Zhu is President of Tesla China and has been with the company since 2014 to lead the expansion of the Supercharger network in China. He rose rapidly, first being promoted to Global Vice President and then taking over as President of Tesla China. Zhu was responsible for bringing Giga Shanghai online and promoting Tesla Service Centers across the country.
This latest report from China makes sense as Elon Musk spends more and more time on Twitter, preferring to be an engineer over a CEO. Antonio Gracias, Tesla’s former board member, confirmed that the company is looking for an “executive CEO” to allow Musk to focus on what he’s best at – being chief product officer.
Elon Musk has always expressed that he dislikes the administrative part of his job, admitting many times that he absolutely hates it and always prefers being an engineer.
Zhou is already in Texas to oversee the Gigafactory’s operations at the request of Elon Musk. Bloomberg reports that this last-minute appointment was simply to allow Zhou to get used to the way Tesla operates in the US and prepare him for the new position.
There have been many calls for Elon Musk to step down as CEO, and many investors have expressed disapproval of his latest Twitter saga and its impact on the company’s stock prices. Amid the wider market turmoil, Tesla is performing quite poorly, with its shares falling steadily and steadily.
The company could benefit greatly with a steady hand at the helm, Elon could have more time to fix Twitter, and investors could finally get what they wanted. It will be interesting to see what the next move will be, as Elon relinquishing his CEO position means he’s giving up on the highly lucrative compensation deal, which means he’ll have to sell more Tesla shares to continue funding SpaceX – unless SpaceX goes public, which won’t.