Tesla IT VP Raj Jegannathan Takes Over Sales Top Spot

Tesla has always done things a little differently than other automakers. Its history in tech instead of automotive is a big part of that, and it has been a benefit for the company at least as often as its moves have gone the other way. But one of the company’s latest moves with a tech exec might be a little bit too strange. One of the company’s IT executives is now in charge of the company’s sales.

Is this an inspired choice as Tesla faces slumping sales of its EVs like the Model Y, which was the best-selling vehicle in the world, or is this another misstep from easily distracted CEO Elon Musk?

New Exec Comes From IT, Not Cars

Raj Jegannathan is the new vice president and head of North American sales for Tesla. He does not have any previous experience in sales, Reuters reports, based on insider sources and his LinkedIn resumé. Instead, he has spent the last 13 years at Tesla in various technology positions. He started with the automaker as a staff engineer working on internet traffic and cloud security, and has helped work on Tesla’s data center in Texas, he says in his LinkedIn profile.

After a stretch seconded to Twitter after Musk purchased the social media site in 2022, Jegannathan became a VP for IT/AI infrastructure, apps, and information security at Tesla. A Reuters source said that he took over Tesla vehicle service operations in the last few months.

Until just days before, the VP of sales, service, and deliveries in North America was Troy Jones. Jones had been with Tesla for 15 years, until he departed the company in July. That left a massive hole after Omead Afshar, who was in charge of Tesla sales and manufacturing in North America and Europe left in June.

Tesla has been losing senior staff at a very high rate. Other recent departures include head of Tesla’s Optimus robot team Milan Kovac, battery exec Vineet Mehta, and software head David Lau.

Tesla Needs To Reboot Its Image

Jegannathan will have a tough role to fill. Brand sales were down 13 percent last quarter, with backlash against Musk’s political actions having a serious effect. The Cybertruck, a model Musk expected to sell in the hundreds of thousands per year, is instead selling in numbers a tenth of that.

Blowing off the contacts and picking someone from outside traditional sales isn’t exactly a new idea. General Motors tried it in 1992, when it brought in the prior chair of Procter & Gamble to be the chair of the car company.

The move received a great deal of criticism at the time, with claims that a guy who sold laundry soap couldn’t sell cars. Instead, John Smale and a series of brand managers from outside the auto world turned GM around quicker than a Chevy truck in a tornado. The company went from losing billions to record earnings in just two years.

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Smale’s transformation didn’t last, and the reasons relate directly to Tesla. Smale improved marketing, but when the product didn’t get better, the marketing couldn’t sustain sales forever. Jegannathan will need to improve Tesla’s marketing, and the marketing of Elon Musk himself. But without new and improved cars – more than the mild makeover the Model 3 and Y got recently – replacing models like the now ancient Model S, it may not matter what he does.

Source: Reuters