Rohan Patel, Tesla's head of policy and business development, is retiring from the company, becoming the second executive to do so today.
Patel joined Tesla in 2017 after leaving the Obama White House as “Special Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs and Senior Advisor for Climate and Energy.”
He became Tesla's vice president of public policy and business development.
The executive led many initiatives at Tesla, including relationships with the many government agencies and regulators with which Tesla has to deal.
After seven years at Tesla, Patel announced today that he is retiring.
Like Tesla's senior vice president of engineering, Drew Baglino, Patel today did not give a reason for leaving Tesla. It also appears that he was not scouted by competitors, as he has stated that his only plan is to spend time with his family.
Their high-profile departures come as Elon Musk announced that Tesla would lay off more than 10% of its workforce in large-scale layoffs.
Since Musk bought Twitter, Patel has been one of several Tesla executives and engineers to join the platform to comment on the company's operations and interact with the Tesla community.
When we reported on the layoffs earlier this morning, we noted that Patel and Baglino had already removed the “Tesla badge” from Company X. Badges are used on social media platforms to represent affiliation to specific organizations that pay for gold badges.
Electrek's view
Two of Tesla's highest-profile and longest-serving executives are leaving on the same day that Tesla begins a major round of layoffs.
It doesn't look very good.
Elon became part-time CEO, including two of Tesla's four publicly traded leaders deemed significant enough to have to report their remaining stock transactions in the past six months. Several high-profile figures have stepped down.
This is bad. I think Tesla has had a clear leadership crisis ever since Elon bought Twitter and started xAi, and the board hasn't done much about it.
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