Tesla taps its head of China to take over Gigafactory Texas

Tesla has reportedly tapped Tom Zhu, president of Tesla in China, to take over leadership of Gigafactory Texas as the factory is trying to ramp up production.

In October, Electrek reported that Tesla was still looking for a leader at Gigafactory Texas. That’s somewhat surprising considering Tesla started production at the factory a year ago.

Now we learn that Tesla has Tom Zhu, the executive in charge of Tesla’s operations in China, taking over the responsibilities of Gigafactory Texas, according to Bloomberg:

Elon Musk has tapped a longtime Tesla Inc. executive in China who oversaw construction of the Shanghai gigfactory to help run the electric carmaker’s newest plant in Austin, Texas, people familiar with the matter said.

The report doesn’t specify if the move is permanent or if Zhu will retain his responsibilities in China.

The news comes just after a report from China claiming that Zhu has been tapped to take over the role of CEO from Elon Musk at Tesla. However, we did note that the circumstances of the media report were strange.

The news comes amid Tesla trying to ramp up production of both Gigafactory Texas and Gigafactory Berlin simultaneously. Tesla already confirmed that Giga Berlin is now producing 2,000 vehicles per week.

Tesla previously confirmed 1,000 vehicles per week at Giga Texas back in June, but it hasn’t updated the production rate since then.

Interestingly, the company announced that Gigafactory Texas produced its 20,000th Model Y in October, but that’s the total production to date, and it doesn’t tell us the current production rate.

However, Electrek recently reported that Tesla plans a massive production output ramp at Gigafactory Texas in the first quarter of 2023. The automaker is preparing for 75,000 Model Y vehicles coming from the plant in Q1 2023.

In November, Tesla reportedly brought about 200 engineers working at Gigafactory Shanghai to Fremont factory to help ramp production at the US plant.

Tesla appears to be trying to replicate the success it had at Gigafactory Shanghai at its US factories.