Tesla fires Musk’s chief of staff who became head of North America and Europe

Tesla has reportedly fired its head of operations for North America and Europe, a controversial employee who rose to the leadership position after serving as Elon Musk’s chief of staff.

As we previously reported, Omead Afshar had an interesting career trajectory, to say the least.

According to his LinkedIn profile, he studied biomedical engineering at UC Irvine and found himself working at medical equipment manufacturer St. Jude Medical from 2011 to 2017.

Then, he did a short 7-month stint as “Manager, High Voltage Operations and Operations Business Systems” at healthcare giant Abbott in Los Angeles before finding himself working in the “office of the CEO” under Elon Musk.

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After Musk’s longtime chief of staff (officially the director of the office of the CEO), Sam Teller, left in 2019, Afshar was seen as taking over that role by many people working under Musk at his many companies, but especially Tesla, where Afshar started to lead some projects.

For example, Musk credited Afshar for leading the construction of Gigafactory Texas.

In 2022, Afshar reportedly got in hot water at Tesla.

A report claimed that Afshar was about to be fired from Tesla over a curious controversy where he allegedly placed an order for a “special glass” for a “secret project,” which the automaker’s finance department flagged as suspicious, triggering an internal investigation.

The basis of the investigation was that an employee was using company resources to secure materials for a project that potentially had no relation to Tesla.

According to the report, Tesla had already fired employees related to the investigation, and Afshar was next in line.

The project has been linked to the story that Musk was planning to build a glasshouse near Austin, which was confirmed in his biography by Walter Isaacson; however, the project never came to fruition.

Tesla never disclosed the outcome of its internal investigation, but it was later reported that Musk temporarily reassigned Afshar to SpaceX. Many interpreted the situation as Afshar taking the blame for Musk since the project aimed to benefit him personally.

Two years later, it was reported that Ashar was back at Tesla and elevated to the role of Vice President of operations in North America and Europe, where he will be in charge of sales and manufacturing.

The role effectively made him one of the top executives at Tesla.

Now, Forbes reports that Afshar was let go from Tesla:

Elon Musk fired Tesla’s head of operations in North America and Europe, amid declining sales in both regions and the electric vehicle brand’s falling popularity, according to people familiar with the matter.

The departure comes amid Tesla facing significant demand issues, especially in Europe, where sales are in free fall despite record incentives and soaring EV sales.

Tesla’s deliveries are now expected to decline quarter-over-quarter in both Europe and China, compared to an already challenging first quarter.

The automaker blamed its poor performance in Q1 on the Model Y changeover, but it doesn’t have that excuse this quarter, and sales are expected to be down about 90,000 units compared to last year.

Electrek’s Take

At this point, I think it’s clear that the main reasons for Tesla’s declining sales are Elon Musk and the fact that the automaker has launched a single new vehicle in the last 5 years, and it’s the Cybertruck.

You can also blame the latter on Musk.

Yet, someone, and someone was believed to be close to Musk, has gotten let go over this issue when it’s clear who should be let go.

But that said, I’m surprised Omead got the axe. He was seen as one of the main Elon loyalists.