Exclusive: Tesla hunts for design chief to create cars for China - sources
The U.S. carmaker’s human resources managers, as well as several headhunters, have been trawling the industry over the past four months, the sources said.
They are looking for “bi-cultural” candidates with 20 or more years of experience who are familiar with Chinese tastes and can bridge the gaps between China and the United States, they added.
Some candidates have been interviewed by Tesla’s global design chief Franz von Holzhausen, according to the people, though it was not clear how many potential candidates had been approached by the company and recruiters.
All three sources spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity and confidential nature of the matter.
China is the world’s biggest auto market, plus the largest for all-electric vehicles with sales volumes expected to reach roughly 1.5 million vehicles there this year, according to consultancy LMC Automotive. It is also Tesla’s No.2 market after the United States.
The carmaker’s plans for the design studio are not fully developed, and the sources believe Tesla will likely wait for more clarity on strained U.S.-China relations under a new U.S. president before making a final decision on the move and all its details.
The talent search, which the sources said was mainly focused within China, fits with comments from Tesla boss Elon Musk early last year.
“I think something that would be super cool would be ... to create a China design and engineering centre to actually design an original car in China for worldwide consumption. I think this would be very exciting,” he said at a media event in Shanghai.
FLURRY OF ACTIVITY
Musk’s interest in developing cars in China is part of a broader push by Tesla to boost the company’s global sales volume well past the 500,000-vehicle-a-year mark, which it came just 450 short of hitting in 2020.
All three sources said Tesla’s search for a China studio director began around September, and that there was a flurry of activity as recently as December when a number of headhunters used LinkedIn and other means to approach candidates.
One of the sources, who has knowledge of Tesla’s headhunting activities in China, said that once a design director was hired, Tesla would recruit the director’s team which would likely be around 20-strong and include designers plus modellers who help turn design renderings into clay models.
All the sources said the planned centre aimed to be a comprehensive design outfit, with one describing it as a “full-function studio”, which would not only help conceptualize the design of a car but also come up with the final shape – digital three-dimensional data - of a model.
The data could then be handed over to Tesla’s vehicle engineers, who are mostly based in northern California.
