Top Tesla German Executive Leaves For Competitor

Tesla just lost another key executive to a competitor: this time in Germany. Longtime German boss Jochen Rudat has left the company, according to German newsmagazine Manager Magazin. 

There had been a “backlog of tensions” between Tesla CEO Elon Musk and the Rudat’s European organization. Musk was reportedly interfering with the introduction of the Model 3 “increasingly” in Europe, according to a translated version of the article.

And, as we all well know by now, when an employee butts heads with Elon Musk for any reason, they usually don’t wind up sticking around much longer.  

We can only imagine how frustrated Rudat, whose relatively prestigious resume includes BMW Group and Porsche, was probably getting as “genius” Musk micromanaged him and likely peppered him with every Ambien and red wine induced brain-fart he conjured up. 

Rudat has reportedly been on leave since July 2019 and his contract with Tesla is set to expire at the end of September. In October, he will be working for Tesla competitor Automobili Pininfarina and will be reporting to former Audi CEO Michael Perschke, who we are guessing likely has a better grasp not only on the industry, but also on reality in general, than Musk. 

Additionally, Twitter sleuths posted yesterday that Phillipp Hempel, formerly Tesla’s head of Enterprise Sales DACH in Dusseldorf, Germany, had also updated his LinkedIn to reflect that he had left the company. 

Hempel had been with the company since 2013, according to his LinkedIn, when he started as a Sales Advisor. 

RED SIREN EMOJI

Philipp Hempel, Head of Enterprise Sales DACH is out at $TSLAQ. Based on the email @nextmove_de posted, we think this may be the guy that messed their order up?#TeslaInternDeparture@scot_work @Paul_M_Huettner @markbspiegel @TESLAcharts @BloodsportCap pic.twitter.com/cuVziS35sf

— BrunoMoon (@TSLAchooo) September 17, 2019

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js