Tesla loses one of its top executives in Europe

Tesla has lost one of its top executives in Europe in charge of all business development and public policies.

He is one of two top Tesla executives to leave this week.

Jos Dings joined Tesla in 2017 after more than a decade at Transport & Environment (T&E), a European group promoting sustainable transport.

After a few years managing Tesla’s government affairs in Europe, Dings was promoted to Director of Public Policy and Business Development for EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa).

He described his job on his LinkedIn:

Leading Tesla’s EMEA public policy & business development team. We help accelerate the transition to sustainable energy through policy change at national, EU and global (UN-ECE) level. Key words climate, energy, industrial policy, incentives and regulatory credits, vehicle charging, electricity markets, trade, data, assisted and automated driving, safety, AI, circularity, state aid, permitting, batteries and supply chains. We also help the company decide on whether, what, when and where to localise our activities, including through our first European ‘Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg’.

This week, Dings announced that he is leaving Tesla after more than 7 years.

In his post announcing his departure, the executive didn’t explain why other than he wants to take time with his family, but he did share some interesting insights about his work at Tesla.

For example, he played an important part in establishing Tesla Gigafactory Berlin:

The company got through, and into full expansion mode, and in 2019 I ended up working with the inimitable Peter Lommen to find a place for Tesla’s European Gigafactory. Once Elon agreed on a site just outside of Berlin, we started the odyssey of turning a pine production forest into a working Model Y factory asap. 861 days it took, stil unrivalled in Europe for a project this size. Brandenburg was rightly proud, but it also showed how only a company taking on insane risk can move fast in Europe/Germany. It took 19 preliminary permits and seven won lawsuits before the real permit came in and production could start.

Giga Berlin helped Model Y become the best-selling car in Europe.

Though he also highlighted that public policies did contribute to some issues for the European factory’s battery cell production:

Some pain was in vain though. The Brandenburg 4680 cell plant is technically almost ready but not producing, largely because the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) homeshored Tesla’s battery programme to the US. The IRA achieved what a >1bn ‘IPCEI’ proposal couldn’t: catalyse domestic clean energy investment.

Dings says that Stefano Mottarelli, senior manager of public policy for EMEA, will replace him.

Dings is the second top public policy exec to leave Tesla this year after Rohan Patel, Tesla’s former global head of public policy, left earlier this year.

Tesla’s leadership has changed tremendously over the last year, both due to layoffs initiated by Elon Musk during the first quarter and through execs leaving by themselves.