(Bloomberg) -- Omead Afshar, one of Elon Musk’s closest confidantes, has been promoted to oversee Tesla Inc.’s operations in North America and Europe, according to people familiar with the matter.
Afshar, who’s worked in the office of the CEO, is now a vice president overseeing manufacturing and sales, said the people, who declined to be identified discussing private matters. Afshar’s direct reports include Troy Jones, the VP of North America sales and service, as well as Jason Shawhan, the director of manufacturing for Tesla in Texas. The Wall Street Journal first reported the job change.
Musk has also promoted other lieutenants to run to key parts of the business: self-driving development and Optimus, Tesla’s humanoid robot. Ashok Elluswamy is now vice president of Autopilot and AI software, and Milan Kovac is vice president of Optimus. Both changes were reflected on LinkedIn late Wednesday.
The additional responsibilities were assigned prior to Tesla’s unveiling of the Cybercab last week, said a person who declined to be identified discussing internal matters.
Afshar came under internal scrutiny in 2022 for his role in purchasing hard-to-get construction materials, Bloomberg reported, and worked at SpaceX for a time.
Musk has a long history of shuffling executives from one part of his empire to another, or sharing them across his companies. Tesla has just three named executive officers: Musk, Chief Financial Officer Vaibhav Taneja and Tom Zhu, senior vice president of automotive.
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