The Chinese man who was favored by Musk

Welcome to the WeChat subscription account of “Sina Technology”: techsina

Text/Juice Youyan

Source/Car things (ID: chedongxi)

Tesla to change CEO? Or a Chinese?

From last night to now, this news has continued to spread in the car circle, and it has become the biggest news in the car circle today.

The source of the news is a report from Pinwan, saying that Musk has confirmed the suitable candidate to succeed him as CEO of Tesla, and this suitable candidate is Tesla’s current boss in China—Tesla’s current global CEO. Zhu Xiaotong, vice president and CEO of Greater China. Bloomberg said it may first promote production at Tesla’s Texas plant.

At present, many media at home and abroad have reported, but Tesla officials have not officially responded.

Pinwan also stated in the report that after Zhu Xiaotong takes over as CEO, he may be limited to the management and operation of the automotive business, and businesses such as autonomous driving and robots will still be in the hands of Musk.

But even so, the news was shocking enough.

The direct jump from a regional CEO to a global CEO has never happened inside Tesla. Musk has always been the CEO of Tesla before. If this appointment is true, it can be seen that Musk treats him well. How satisfied is the subordinate.

From a production manager to a global CEO, Zhu Xiaotong’s way of promotion also makes people think of Cook, the current CEO of Apple, another great company in Silicon Valley.

Compared with Musk and Jobs, Zhu Xiaotong and Cook are not the ones full of unconstrained imagination, but they both have calm personalities, and they are both people who can lead the company to a new stage.

Under the leadership of Cook, Apple has truly become the number one company in the technology field, and its market value has continued to grow. Whether Zhu Xiaotong can lead Tesla to a higher level is very possible based on Tesla’s performance in China.

However, before this personnel appointment is confirmed, there are actually several key issues that need to be considered, such as why did Tesla change the CEO at this time? And why did Zhu Xiaotong become a strong candidate for the new CEO? Che Dongxi tried to answer these two questions by sorting out Tesla’s current status and Zhu Xiaotong’s past resume.

Musk lacks skills and prefers technology research and development

Tesla’s search for a new global CEO has actually only started to ferment in the last two months. On November 16, US time, Tesla shareholders sued Musk, saying that his salary was too high. When defending Musk, a member of the board of directors released a big news: Musk hopes that someone will replace him as CEO, and there are already interested people.

At that time, it attracted the attention of the industry, but there has been no news about Tesla’s new CEO in the follow-up, and everyone’s attention to this matter has gradually slowed down.

A few days ago, the report of Pinwan once again revealed this matter, and further gave possible candidates.

At this point, the first very critical question arises. Musk has done a good job in the position of Tesla CEO. Why should he find a successor?

The Chinese name of the CEO is Chief Executive Officer, who is responsible for the company’s operations and hosts daily activities. In the past ten years, Musk has been doing such things, leading Tesla’s product development, factory expansion, and a series of major event.

But it is worth noting that Tesla is not all about Musk. This famous Silicon Valley technology madman also has SpaceX (rocket company), The Boring Company (underground rail transit company), Starlink (Starlink Company), Companies such as Neuralink (brain-computer interface company) and SolarCity (energy company) have recently acquired the overseas social media giant Twitter. These companies all need Musk to make decisions.

Although Musk himself is a workaholic, he can work 120 hours a week and even often sleeps in the company. But with so many companies with different businesses, Musk can no longer take care of them through hard work. He must let go and let more people participate in the management of the company.

On the other hand, although Musk is already the richest man in the world, he has always positioned himself as an engineer and prefers to shine in technical positions to ensure that his companies can develop breakthrough technologies and create a great team of engineers .

“In my experience, great engineers only work for great engineers.” Musk has repeatedly identified himself as a technician. With the rapid development of Tesla, Musk has not found a suitable candidate, so he can only take care of the position of Tesla CEO.

Tesla’s stable development requires scale expansion

So, why does Musk feel that this is the right time to give up the CEO position?

In the early days of its establishment, Tesla faced a lot of pressure. Although the Roadster proved that the pure electric sports car had a head, and later proved through the Model S that the path of mass production of electric vehicles was feasible, but at that time Tesla was in In the hearts of the public, it is just a company that dares to innovate, and few people will really recognize Tesla’s ability to change the world.

On July 29, 2017, Tesla delivered the world’s first Model 3. At that time, Musk might not have imagined that this car would bring him so much pain and surprise.

Not long after the delivery, Tesla fell into the production hell of the Model 3. In order to increase production capacity, Musk slept directly in the factory, ready to solve new problems that were born. On the other hand, due to the long delivery cycle of the vehicle, especially Tesla is also facing troubles such as customer refunds, layoffs, and debt crises.

The pressure on Musk from this crisis was not small. Later, he revealed that he once wanted Apple to acquire Tesla for US$60 billion (about 418.1 billion yuan).

Later, with the smooth start of production at the Shanghai factory, Tesla also got out of the Model 3 production hell. After that, the Model 3 quickly set off a storm of electric vehicles around the world, making Tesla the first electric vehicle company with cumulative sales exceeding one million.

Also driven by Tesla, more and more companies have begun to transform into electric vehicles, and Tesla has truly changed the world.

After Model 3, Tesla also launched Model Y, the last car in the “SXEY” array. This car has also achieved good results and has become Tesla’s best-selling model.

It can be said that with the global sales of Model 3 and Model Y, Tesla has proved that its technology and products are extremely competitive, and Tesla’s R&D system has also embarked on the right path.

Now Tesla’s top priority is to expand production capacity.

Since the beginning of this year, Musk has repeatedly mentioned the goal of annual production of 20 million units, and in order to achieve this goal, Tesla expanded the Shanghai factory and built a Berlin factory and a Texas factory.

But the matter of expanding production capacity is too trivial for Musk, which will further cut up his working time, so it is obviously more cost-effective to find a suitable CEO to do this.

The key person who created Shanghai Speed ​​Tesla to increase sales

As an almost paranoid person, Musk has very high requirements for his employees. During the development of Tesla, there are many people who can’t bear the pressure and leave. Therefore, it is not easy to become a CEO candidate in Musk’s eyes.

And why can Zhu Xiaotong become the most suitable successor in the media’s mouth? Let’s take a look at what Zhu Xiaotong did.

According to public information, Zhu Xiaotong was born in Shenyang City, Liaoning Province. He graduated from Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand with a bachelor’s degree, and later obtained an MBA degree from Fuqua Business School of Duke University in the United States.

Before joining Tesla, Zhu Xiaotong did not have any experience in the AI ​​industry or the automotive industry.

When studying at Duke University in the United States, he was already a manager of Kaibo Engineering Group, a company mainly engaged in engineering design and construction, consulting and general contracting. While working in this company, Zhu Xiaotong worked in Sudan for two years, responsible for engineering project negotiation and supervision.

Later, Zhu Xiaotong also said in an interview that when working in North Africa, he learned a lot of experience in communication, coordination and management. However, it is precisely because of this experience that some former Tesla employees once called him an excellent “contractor”.

In April 2014, Zhu Xiaotong officially joined Tesla as the director of the Tesla China super charging station project. He may have been an engineer. Zhu Xiaotong played a very important role in the construction of the super charging station. I once sent an email to praise Zhu Xiaotong’s achievements.

By the end of that year, Tesla had built 9 experience stores and service centers in 6 cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu, and Xi’an, and built nearly 40 super charging stations in 19 cities in China. More than 600 charging piles have been built in more than 60 cities.

Only 8 months after joining the company, Zhu Xiaotong ushered in his first promotion, and began to take over the sales in China as the general manager of China. Judging from the level, Zhu Xiaotong was already the top leader of Tesla China at that time. But at that time, Tesla was only a niche electric car brand in China, which was far from being able to compare with the current situation.

After Zhu Xiaotong took over, he has been working on the construction of Tesla experience stores and service centers, as well as the construction of super charging stations, which belongs to infrastructure construction. But at that time, China was not too important to Tesla, and its main core market was still in the United States.

Zhu Xiaotong’s role really began to stand out after 2018.

On October 17, 2018, Tesla announced that it had won an industrial land of 866,000 square meters in Lingang, Shanghai at a price of 1 billion yuan. In January 2019, Tesla began to break ground to build a Chinese factory here, and Zhu Xiaotong, as the person in charge of the China region, also took over the position of the person in charge of the Shanghai factory.

This also allowed Zhu Xiaotong to once again exert his ability to manage projects. The construction of Tesla’s Shanghai factory set a record. It broke ground in January and started trial production in October. This has never happened in the automotive industry before. .

The speed of the Shanghai factory is not only reflected in the construction speed. In December 2019, the Model 3 produced by the Tesla Shanghai factory officially started internal delivery. In the whole year of 2020, the production capacity of the Tesla Shanghai factory reached 25. 10,000 vehicles, while Tesla’s total production capacity that year was 500,000 vehicles, which basically accounted for half of Tesla’s production capacity.

For the whole year of 2021, Tesla’s Shanghai factory produced a total of 480,000 vehicles. Tesla’s global production capacity that year was 930,000 vehicles, and the Shanghai factory’s production capacity accounted for 51.7% of the total delivery volume.

Two years after its completion, it has contributed more than half of Tesla’s sales, which shows the importance of Tesla’s Shanghai factory, and Zhu Xiaotong is an important driving force behind it.

In August of this year, Tesla announced that it has produced more than 3 million vehicles worldwide, and the Shanghai factory has also completed the roll-off of 1 million vehicles. Tesla has gone from 0 to 3 million vehicles for nearly 20 years, and Tesla It took less than three years for the Shanghai factory to go from 0 to 1 million vehicles.

It is said that the current annual production capacity of Tesla’s Shanghai plant has reached 750,000 vehicles, making it Tesla’s factory with the highest production capacity.

Tesla’s Shanghai factory was able to achieve this achievement, obviously inseparable from Zhu Xiaotong, a staunch follower of Musk, who also slept in the factory to ensure production and delivery during the Shanghai epidemic this year.

Musk has said many times that Tesla will not launch new cars this year, the main task is to expand the scale, but the current production capacity of the Texas plant and the Berlin plant is not as encouraging as the Shanghai plant. The Shanghai factory dispatched personnel to the Texas factory for guidance.

It can be said that Zhu Xiaotong will be the most suitable candidate for Tesla to complete the increase in production capacity.

In addition, let’s talk about Zhu Xiaotong. His style of acting is very low-key. During the years in charge of the business in China, he rarely made public appearances. Even in the face of interviews, he was very straightforward.

According to media reports, Zhu Xiaotong is very focused on his work, and also very skillful. A member of Zhu Xiaotong’s former team even used sharp (sharp) to describe his work style.

Tesla’s internal employees told Che Dongxi that Zhu Xiaotong is a kind and approachable person in dealing with others. He often accepts and approves the grass-roots employees’ suggestions directly to him. And when an employee makes a mistake, he will not scold others, but directly point out the mistake in the work group and inform the correct way.

In terms of work, Zhu Xiaotong is very diligent, even desperate, as some media reports.

The above-mentioned Tesla employee told Che Dongxi that media reports that Zhu Xiaotong replied to WeChat in the early morning were true. The employee also encountered a situation where Zhu Xiaotong replied in seconds after sending a message in the work group at 1 am. And the most important thing is that he can return in seconds at six or seven o’clock the next morning, as if he hasn’t slept much.

According to the employee, Zhu Xiaotong spends most of his time in Shanghai focusing on manufacturing. His main goal is to find ways to manufacture cars faster, at lower cost, and with higher quality, and to build more cars.

The face-to-face contact between the two took place mainly in a few internal speeches.

“His speech is not to repeat what Musk said, but to have his own knowledge and understanding, to be able to present solid evidence to support his point of view, to achieve a logical closed loop, and to be extremely contagious.” “You can clearly feel that he is a man with a lot of money,” said one Tesla employee.

Zhu Xiaotong also has an impressive little habit when giving speeches.

In order to allow grassroots employees to have a direct dialogue and communication with him, every time he gives a speech, he will buy a boutique worth thousands of yuan from Tesla’s official mall as a gift, and then ask the audience at the end of the speech if they know The five contact methods of oneself, the person who answers correctly can get this gift.

“It’s like this every time, very impressive.” The Tesla employee said, “The specific five ways are WeChat, phone calls, two mailboxes, and Microsoft Teams.”

For his boss Musk, Zhu Xiaotong can be described as a firm follower of Muskism. He once told the media that Musk is very straightforward, even innocent, resolute and demanding. Will not follow him.

Obviously, Zhu Xiaotong agrees with Musk very much, and Musk also admires this subordinate on the other side of the ocean very much, and has repeatedly praised the achievements of the Chinese team in public.

▲Musk tweeted to praise the Chinese team

Although Tesla has not officially announced that Zhu Xiaotong will succeed Tesla’s global CEO, from many perspectives, Zhu Xiaotong is very suitable for this position, and it is not surprising to become Tesla’s global CEO in the future.

However, before Tesla’s official announcement, this matter cannot be confirmed. After all, no one knows what the Martian Musk’s head is thinking.

Conclusion: Can Zhu Xiaotong take Tesla to the next level?

In the technology circle, Tesla has grown into a company that can be compared with Apple. The two have many similarities, such as a creative leader who has changed the world in their respective fields.

After Cook took over as CEO, Apple took the company to a new level. If Zhu Xiaotong takes over as Tesla’s global CEO, his first task will be to achieve new growth in Tesla’s production capacity and sales.

So, we might as well think about a question, if Zhu Xiaotong really takes over as Tesla’s global CEO, can Tesla be taken to a higher level?

This article is reproduced from: https://finance.sina.com.cn/tech/csj/2022-12-08/doc-imqmmthc7491227.shtml
This site is only for collection, and the copyright belongs to the original author.