Tesla’s head of Giga Shanghai has left the building

Tesla’s head of Gigafactory Shanghai, Song Gang, who is behind a lot of the automaker’s manufacturing success, confirmed that he left the company.

Song was one of Tesla’s first manufacturing employees in China.

After a decade of working in the auto industry in China, including with Ford and GM, Song was hired by Tesla in a wide-ranging role in charge of many aspects of Tesla’s manufacturing operations. That was in late 2018 when Tesla started construction of the factory.

He is credited with being a big part of Tesla’s success in building, setting up, and getting Gigafactory Shanghai to production in a record time. And later, it became Tesla’s biggest manufacturing hub.

Last year, Song was made Vice-President in charge of all operations at Gigafactory Shanghai.

He was also on the team that Tom Zhu, Musk’s right-hand man at Tesla at the time, brought from China to help fix issues at Gigafactory Texas.

Today, Song confirmed that he is leaving Tesla. He confirmed this on his LinkedIn profile and in a letter to employees:

Today is my last day at Tesla and I feel extremely fortunate to have worked and fought with everyone on this plot of land.

Fei Wenjin, a recently promoted senior director of quality at the plant, will now be in charge of the factory, according to a Bloomberg report.

Song is leaving as Tesla’s sales and production in China appear to be peaking with only Model 3 and Model Y currently being produced in the country, which happens to be the world’s largest EV market.

Tesla needs new and cheaper vehicles in the market, which is increasingly growing competitive.

Electrek’s Take

As I have been reporting for years, I think Tesla’s talent exodus is a real problem. We have seen a ton of top talent leave and I’d put Song in that group.

Elon fans love to point out that they might leave for various reasons, and that’s true, but it doesn’t change the fact that they are gone.

There are still plenty of talented people at Tesla, and I wish them luck. Still, based on my close reporting on this for years (I literally spend hours every week tracking employee movements at Tesla), I can confidently say that there are fewer now than a few years ago.