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Tesla to promote Tesla China president to global CEO

Elon Musk has decided on the person to take the position as the CEO of Tesla Global, according to trusted sources. Tom Xiaotong Zhu, currently President of Tesla China and a Global Vice President, will likely move on to lead the electric vehicle and clean energy giant. Different sources have said that the new appointment for Zhu will only cover Tesla’s automotive business, and will exclude its autonomous driving and robotics projects from the start. On November 16, 2022, Tesla board member James Murdoch stated at the trial of a lawsuit that Musk had recently proposed the possibility of someone else taking over some leadership at Tesla and identified a potential successor. Murdoch did not reveal the specific candidate. Zhu rose to Tesla China’s leadership on December 12, 2014, when former Global Vice President and President of Greater China Veronica Bixuan Wu left the company abruptly due to disappointing sales numbers. Tesla announced that Zhu would replace Wu to lead sales operations in China. In a February 2015 press interview, Zhu’s publicly displayed title was the China Country Manager for Tesla, a position that is not considered high-level internally. In July 2019, nearly a year after Tesla signed the crucial investment agreement with local governments in Shanghai for a Gigafactory, Zhu was publicly identified as Tesla’s Global Vice President and President of Greater China. In October that year, the Shanghai Gigafactory officially began churning out vehicles, helping Tesla deliver the first domestically made Model 3 just two days before the new year. Since then, Tesla has recorded remarkable growth in China. Financial statements showed that the company delivered 936,000 vehicles globally in 2021, of which 484,130 were made in the Shanghai plant, accounting for 51.7% of the total global deliveries. On August 15, 2022, Musk revealed that Tesla had just crossed the mark of 3 million vehicles made, of which the Shanghai plant produced a third. Xinhua News Agency reported that Gigafactory Shanghai delivered 100,291 vehicles in November this year alone, setting yet another new record for monthly deliveries. Within the first 11 months of 2022, cumulative deliveries from the Shanghai plant exceeded 650,000 units. Tesla’s reports for Q3 this year indicated that it achieved operating revenue of $5.131 billion (approx. RMB 37.492 billion) in China, up 64.8% from $3.113 billion last year, adding its operating revenue for the first three quarters in China to $13.568 billion (approx. RMB 99.141 billion), up 50.5% from $9.015 billion in 2021. Accounting for 23.9% of the company’s worldwide revenue, China is now Tesla’s second largest market globally, behind the United States. (Source Pingwest)

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