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Tesla's German Automation Expert Klaus Grohmann Ousted After Clash With CEO Musk (reuters.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the difference-of-opinion dept.

According to Reuters, "Tesla executive Klaus Grohmann was ousted last month after a clash with CEO Elon Musk over the strategy of Grohmann's firm, which Tesla had acquired in November." Grohmann Engineer's automation and engineering expertise is being relied upon by Tesla to help it increase production to 500,000 cars per year by 2018. From the report: Tesla planned to keep Grohmann on, and Grohmann wanted to stay, but the clash with Musk over how to treat existing clients resulted in his departure, the source said. Grohmann disagreed with Musk's demands to focus management attention on Tesla projects to the detriment of Grohmann Engineering's legacy clients, which included Tesla's direct German-based rivals Daimler and BMW, two sources familiar with the matter said. "I definitely did not depart because I had lost interest in working," Grohmann said, without elaborating. A Tesla spokesman, asked about Grohmann's departure, praised him for building an "incredible company" and said: "Part of Mr Grohmann's decision to work with Tesla was to prepare for his retirement and leave the company in capable hands for the future. Given the change in focus to Tesla projects, we mutually decided that it was the right time for the next generation of management to lead."

28 of 69 comments (clear)

  1. Duh, by Spy+Handler · · Score: 4, Insightful

    BMW and Benz are Tesla's competitors. Of course Tesla is gonna want to "service" them as little as possible. What did he expect?

    If Mr. Grohmann wanted to continue providing excellent service to BMW, maybe he should've just kept his company and not sold it to Tesla.

    1. Re:Duh, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Go ahead and show me a BMW or a Benz with a cracked A pillar delivered to a customer.

    2. Re:Duh, by Jzanu · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Tesla isn't in the same league as BMW or Benz. Tesla is in the same league as the Yugo. They have terrible build quality, terrible reliability, a criminally negligent design, and just quite frankly they aren't even luxury cars.

      The quoted parent post is a perfect example of reality being suppressed by negative scoring. Slashdot should be better than that. Musk is treated like an idol, and his firms are treated as sacrosanct but they are simply businesses with a a lot of product failures due to inexperience and poor management.

    3. Re: Duh, by Type44Q · · Score: 1

      Yeah; I hear their customers really hate them. Well, except the dozens and dozens of Model S owners I've spoken to... but I'm sure they're all outliers. :)

    4. Re:Duh, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Tesla isn't in the same league as BMW or Benz. Tesla is in the same league as the Yugo. They have terrible build quality, terrible reliability, a criminally negligent design, and just quite frankly they aren't even luxury cars.

      The quoted parent post is a perfect example of reality being suppressed by negative scoring. Slashdot should be better than that. Musk is treated like an idol, and his firms are treated as sacrosanct but they are simply businesses with a a lot of product failures due to inexperience and poor management.

      Try looking a little deeper, _every_ manufacturer has defects, all of them, period. The question isn't if there are defects, it's how does the company respond. The very few links (4) are supposed to support the claim that Musk and Tesla are crappy/bad/unethical/etc... yet, look again at those links:

      Link #1: As of right now, the last post from the forum on the links "terrible build quality" is this: (1 link down, 3 to go)

      Just want to update you folks on what's going on. The folks at Tesla (our regional service manager and the local sales manager) are working with me to spec out the rebuild. I had wanted to take this chance to increase the battery size to 100D and add the 3rd row child seat and informed the team of my desire a couple weeks ago. This would have been relatively simple but since the process took some time to get rolling, it now got more complicated because of all the price changes and the fact that 100D is now includes bundling of options that I didn't originally selected / wanted such as SAS and 72A charger. Based on the professionalism that I've seen from the service team so far, I still am hopeful that this will be handled in fair fashion, keeping my fingers crossed.

      Link #2: "terrible reliability"

      All repairs were performed under warranty and Tesla delivered the car to us the following morning.

      Whaaa??? They fixed EVERYTHING FOR FREE??? Please explain to the many people with Fords, Chevys, Dodges, etc... how many times they got everything fixed properly for free and the company admitted fault. Now google Tesla's track record for fixing issues... yah, I hear crickets too.

      Link #3: "a criminally negligent design"

      I won’t try to assign blame or responsibility in this case, whether or not Tesla made it insufficiently clear on how to open these doors when the car has no power...

      "Criminally negligent design"... really? Did they even read the article before posting this link? Also, a follow up comment is interesting as well:

      It’s not uncommon for doors to be inoperable after an impact. This goes for all kinds of doors - even normal manual ones.

      Why is this a story?

      I don't know either...

      Link #4 "they aren't even luxury cars"

      Here's the relevant quote:

      But Tesla says the Model S isn't a luxury car so why the comparison?

      The comparison is about the Model S outselling, so is it

    5. Re:Duh, by guises · · Score: 1

      That is not how it's supposed to work and, thankfully, not usually how it does work. People are people, and this kind of petty shit happens sometimes, but it's not the norm - most of the time people at least pretend to be professional and honor both the letter and the spirit of their contracts. This sort of thing, "Screw prior obligations, you're working for ME now!" this is a name-and-shame situation. You're not supposed to be defending it. That said, it's also a one-sided story.

    6. Re:Duh, by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

      ... honor both the letter and the spirit of their contracts.

      TFA says nothing about "contracts". This is about "relationships". Grohmann sold his company, pocketed Musk's check ... and then expected to continue to run the company and call the shots as if he was still the boss. It doesn't work that way.

    7. Re:Duh, by jandersen · · Score: 1

      BMW and Benz are Tesla's competitors. Of course Tesla is gonna want to "service" them as little as possible. What did he expect?

      Common decency? Having grown a business, I think it is reasonable to think that he had done the normal due diligence, and that he had reasons to expect that existing deals with his customers would be honoured - it's hard to guess without knowing more details. It is not, in fact unusual for companies to have their competitors as customers; I can how it could have been an advantage for Tesla to own the patents and setting the trends for these technologies for a long time, by licensing them to other car manufacturers. I don't think they simply want to cut off all connections - they just want to squeeze them into a deal that pays more to Tesla.

    8. Re:Duh, by antek9 · · Score: 1

      I live in BMW and Daimler country, and I can tell you, there are numerous faults with various models of each maker. No cracked A-pillars that I know of, but especially BMW is commonly referred to here as Bring-Mich-Werkstatt, meaning 'bring me to a service station'. The build quality of the Mini is atrocious. And Benz cars will happily rust away early if you let them. Don't get me started on Volkswagen and their camshaft drive chains that give out prematurely, leading to a catastrophic engine failure, or their faulty automated gear boxes... Tesla build quality still has a way to go, though, I'm not disputing that. Their customers are basically beta testers at this point, and that is already bad enough a practice in the software field, and absolutely unacceptable for car makers.

      --
      A World in a Grain of Sand / Heaven in a Wild Flower,
      Infinity in the Palm of your Hand / And Eternity in an Hour.
    9. Re: Duh, by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      He doesn't realize it, and that's why he wants to have it fixed? OK...

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    10. Re:Duh, by St.Creed · · Score: 1

      Used to work at Benz. A cracked A-pillar is uncommon but they happily delivered Smarts knowing that the engine would blow up in 20.000 km, and that the glass ceiling would crack in winter temperature when the airco was turned on. They delivered me an A-class with a faulty set of sensors and happily replaced the engine and transmission at my cost, claiming it was my fault. Nowadays I don't work there anymore and happily drive a Toyota.

      I'm not saying Tesla is sacred and I'm actually pretty disappointed that they seem to be importing some of the manners of the old carmakers, but the main reason I was stoked about Tesla is precisely because they seemed to be doing away with many of the revolting practices of the old carmakers.

      --
      Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
    11. Re:Duh, by Dripdry · · Score: 1

      Uuh... talk to anyone who works with cars or body work: BMW and Mercedes are some of the worst cars you can buy.
      Who's paying you?

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    12. Re:Duh, by Dripdry · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Which is something most new businesses go through in order to mature: There are bumps in the road.
      Tesla isn't lauded for being the highest quality. Yet.
      They're lauded for disrupting the market in healthy ways.

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    13. Re:Duh, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Delivering a car with a cracked A pillar is criminal negligence not health distruption.

    14. Re:Duh, by guises · · Score: 1

      The article says that Tesla is in negotiations with Grohmann's clients over compensation related to this issue. You can call this what you want, but if they require compensation then these relationships were substantial ones.

      Your assumption about Grohmann's motivations is possible, but unsubstantiated.

    15. Re:Duh, by antek9 · · Score: 1

      I can neither confirm nor deny that. But in terms of relation of turds to units produced, Tesla surely seems worse, for now. Certainly unworthy of a luxury brand, but Tesla still is a very young company, so I will give them that.

      --
      A World in a Grain of Sand / Heaven in a Wild Flower,
      Infinity in the Palm of your Hand / And Eternity in an Hour.
  2. Next steps... by alexhs · · Score: 2

    Grohman founds a new company, most key employees leave for the new company (*), Tesla is left with a bunch of patents.
    <sarcasm> Smart move, Elon! </sarcasm>

    (*) Between leaving for a company with dependable clients and staying in a company continuing to lose money quarter after quarter, the decision shouldn't be too difficult.

    --
    I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
    1. Re:Next steps... by calmdude · · Score: 1

      Grohman founds a new company, most key employees leave for the new company

      That is unlikely to happen. The sale/transfer agreement usually includes significant non-compete and non-solicitation covenants. Whereas it's difficult to enforce employee non-competes in California, the CA courts have regularly and repeatedly enforced non-competes on key members who sold their stake in a company.

    2. Re:Next steps... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      I worked on a major automation project at Tesla as an automation engineer. Tesla offered me a permanent job, but I wouldn't take it.

      Tesla management treats automation engineers as if they are replaceable line workers. They approach problems by trying to buy a quick solution instead of planning for the long term. They spend a lot of money trying to look good (nice lights, painted floor, etc) because they are often giving tours by investment bankers, but they don't have enough experience building cars to produce the product it at scale. I've been in many auto plants and Tesla was just absurd. Tesla's relationships and treatment of automation contractors is bad, which certainly contributes to Tesla's difficulty building cars. Tesla may struggle to build cars, but I have to admit, they have a really impressive stock price.

      TLDR; I would much rather work for Toyota than Tesla. Toyota knows how to build cars, and they know how to maintain good relationships with their workers.

    3. Re:Next steps... by alexhs · · Score: 1

      Grohmann Engineering was a Germany-based company. Of course, German law also allows for non-compete covenants, though I have no idea how they are enforced. In that specific case, one could argue that the new company wouldn't compete with Tesla as Tesla has shown no interest in servicing German customers.

      Also, I wouldn't seriously expect this to happen, that was more a "wouldn't it be funny if..." kind of thought :)

      --
      I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
    4. Re: Next steps... by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      Building a huge battery factory doesn't exactly scream "short-term solution" to me, though.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    5. Re:Next steps... by tempmpi · · Score: 2

      German law allows non-compete agreements but puts some serious restrictions on them. They are limited to a maximum of two years, can be expensive for the former employer because the former employer is required to pay compensation to the former employer while the non-compete agreement is in place. These compensations can often be between 50-100% of the former salary and do not get the former employer anything other than the non-compete. And these non-compete clauses can be hard to add to existing contracts. So it is not unlikely that non-compete clauses wouldn't apply to all the German engineers that were part of Grohman engineering when Tesla purchased them.

      --
      Jan
  3. Re:Shorting is sounding pretty good. by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

    What? I am a huge Musk fan.

  4. The question is... by pushing-robot · · Score: 3, Funny

    Why are they trying to automate Germans? They're efficient enough as-is.

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    How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
    1. Re:The question is... by ArylAkamov · · Score: 1

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

  5. Re: Shorting is sounding pretty good. by Type44Q · · Score: 1

    In that case, he must've been referring to a different twat. Your self-awareness, though, is... interesting.

  6. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  7. Re:So Musk literally sucked him dry by Dripdry · · Score: 1

    I doubt this heavily.
    While I get the sense that Musk has a huge personality, I also get the sense he's got amazing business and interpersonal sense. The guy was able to work directly with Trump; Musk has balls of steel.
    I would actually argue that he probably either knew ahead of time he'd have to let Grohmann go or that something unforeseen occurred.
    Could be as simple as loyalty: get rid of the head of the company to be sure there's a transition, as Musk mentioned, and that new orders are coming down to where they need to, develop new loyalties.
    Who knows, it's water under the bridge now.

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