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

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."

Comments

Duh,

[Spy Handler]

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.

Re:Duh,

[Jzanu]

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.

Re:Duh,

[Dripdry]

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.

Next steps...

[alexhs]

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.

Re:Next steps...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Next steps...

[tempmpi]

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.

The question is...

[pushing-robot]

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