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Electric car brand strengthens workforce amid production challenges

Tesla has expanded its workforce with the hiring of several experts from the technology and car industries, including Apple, Facebook and General Motors former employees.

The high-flying hires include James Zhou, who previously held a high-ranking financial role at GM and will now be Tesla's chief financial officer. Zhou joins the company alongside former Apple technical operations manager Neeraj Manrao, who becomes director of energy manufacturing, while Stuart Bowers, who is named vice-president of engineering, is an expert on machine learning and was an early employee at Facebook.

Several other new recruits have arrived from tech, fashion and manufacturing companies, at a time when Tesla is ramping up investment and seeking to maintain production growth, which has largely been dominated by the new Model 3.

The US electric car maker said last month that it increased production by 40% in the first three months of 2018 — a rate of growth that it claimed “will exceed even that of Ford and the Model T”. The announcement followed several months of production setbacks that left Tesla producing considerably fewer than the 5000 units per week it aims to achieve to meet demand for the latest model. It’s estimated that orders for the Model 3 have surpassed 400,000.

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marineboy 31 May 2018

German Engineers?

It’s a zero emissions vehicle, no German engineering software assistance required.

max1e6 30 May 2018

Tesla is in trouble.

Too little, too late.

Ubberfrancis44 30 May 2018

How about some german

How about some german engineers?! Could help with their atrocious build quality!

xxxx 30 May 2018

German engineers

Could up the range to 3000 miles per charge with some software 'mods' to, well they would if they weren't in prison!