Tesla CTO and co-founder JB Straubel have decided to step down from his everyday role as an automaker executive, CEO Elon Musk declared in a conference call with the analysts on Wednesday. The vice president of technology, Drew Baglino, will be taking over JB Straubel’s duties, Elon Musk stated.
Moreover, Straubel is going to stay as a senior advisor. “I want to thank JB for his fundamental role in creating and for building Tesla,” Elon Musk stated during this call. “If we had not had lunch in 2003, Tesla would not have existed, basically,” Elon Musk further mentioned. Straubel has said that his time at Tesla as been an adventurous journey of 16 years.
“I’m not disappearing, and I just wanted to ensure that people understand that this wasn’t some, you know, lack of confidence in the company or the team or anything like that,” Straubel stated. He further added that he loves this company. JB Straubel was responsible for the company’s most required technology, especially around batteries.
His departure is the newest when it comes to the long string of executives with high-profiles for leaving Tesla in the previous year, most recently a vice president in charge of engineering, Steve McManus, for car interiors & exteriors at Tesla, who has joined Apple.
Another two former executives at Tesla, Michael Schwekutsch, and Doug Field had left as well for joining Apple. Moreover, JB Straubel has been involved in a company named Redwood Materials that had emerged in 2017. The SEC filing also lists JB Straubel along with Andrew Stevenson (who is the former head of certain important projects at Tesla) to be executive officers. However, Stevenson is the CFO at Redwood Materials now.
