Musk rebuilds Tesla team from within amid chaotic exits

Bloomberg

Elon Musk made a series of internal promotions to rebuild Tesla Inc.’s senior management team and downplayed media coverage of the electric-car maker, assuring employees
that production and deliveries are surging.
The chief executive officer filled the voids left by departing heads of human resources and communications and elevated Jerome Guillen to president of automotive operations.
While Musk stopped short of naming a chief operating officer — investor and analyst calls for such a position have increased in light of the CEO’s controversial behaviour — he’s putting significant responsibility on the plate of a veteran manager who’s helped the company pull off a potential production breakthrough with its all-important Model 3 sedan.
The executive changes capped a chaotic week for Tesla in which Musk lost his chief accounting officer after less than a month on the job, Musk attempted to minimise the commotion surrounding his company after Tesla shares sank to the lowest in five months and its bonds traded at record lows.
“For a while, there will be a lot of fuss and noise in the media. Just ignore them,” Musk, 47, said in an email to employees that was republished as a blog post.
“Results are what matter and we are creating the most mind-blowing growth in the history of the automotive industry.”

Doubling Deliveries
Musk said Tesla is about to build and deliver more than twice as many cars as it did last quarter, without being specific about whether the company would accomplish this feat in the third or fourth quarter.
During the three months that ended in June, Tesla produced 53,339 vehicles and delivered 40,740.
The only forecast Tesla had given previously for the third quarter was that it would produce 50,000 to 55,000 Model 3s. Last month, Musk credited Guillen with manufacturing breakthroughs that dramatically improved output of the critical Model 3 sedan. He led the creation of an additional assembly line for the car that’s housed under a tent in the parking lot of its lone auto assembly plant in Fremont, California.
“It turns out Jerome was pulling some pretty incredible rabbits out of the hat,” Musk said last month on Tesla’s quarterly earnings call, after the company hit its target to produce 5,000 of the cars in the last week of June.
Guillen joined Tesla from Mercedes-Benz maker Daimler AG in 2010 and oversaw development of the Model S sedan. He took leave from the company in 2015 but rejoined to work on the Semi truck revealed in November of last year.
More recently, Musk wrote, Guillen took on responsibility for all vehicle engineering and worldwide sales and service.