Elon Musk Doesn't Work Alone. These Are Tesla's Other Key Leaders

But Tesla, unlike most companies its size, doesn’t have any known management structure. There’s no org chart or public list of senior leaders. Musk’s companywide memo didn’t specify how the new, flatter hierarchy beneath him would differ from the old, deeper one.

Musk has long expressed contempt for rigid reporting lines. The electric automaker he has shaped in his image continues to prioritize nimbleness and flexibility over a clear chain of command, even as its workforce ballooned in recent years.

Tesla’s upper ranks include dozens of executives, most of whom never see the limelight—and that’s by design. Aside from the charismatic boss, the company has always focused attention on products over the people who make them.

But an aversion to publicly disclosing a management team or even the names of its upper leadership is deeply unusual. There’s no indication on Tesla’s website of the people who hold major decision-making roles. That’s not how it works at Apple Inc., General Motors Co. or Uber Technologies Inc., all of which provide a list of key leaders.

Even federal regulators are kept in the dark. The most recent proxy statement filed by Tesla with the Securities and Exchange Commission lists just three officers besides Musk: Straubel; Deepak Ahuja, the chief financial officer; and Doug Field, the senior vice president of engineering. Field has been on an extended leave of absence since mid-May, with no indication of when—or if—he will return. Tesla’s investor relations page, which has a brief “management” section, doesn’t include Field.

Adding to interest in who’s calling the shots at the company, Tesla has seen several high-ranking executives—including the former finance chief and roughly a dozen vice presidents—depart since 2016, the year Musk unveiled the Model 3 and acquired SolarCity. Already in 2018, Tesla has parted ways with its president of sales and service, the person running its closely watched Autopilot software program, the executive who was the primary contact with U.S. regulators, and two top members of its finance team. Amid these departures, Tesla has taken pains to announce recent hires like Stuart Bowers as vice president of engineering and Sanjay Shah as senior vice president of energy operations.

In an effort to shed light on Tesla executives who aren’t named Elon Musk, Bloomberg searched public references and interviewed several current and former employees to compile a list of 30 key executives. Tesla is now 15 years old, but most leaders on this list have been at the company fewer than five years. These are the men and women that shareholders and customers are counting on to ramp up production, develop exciting new products, halt the company’s epic cash burn and lead the world’s transformation from a mine-and-burn economy to a sustainable future.

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