Yesterday Tesla announced that their CFO, Zachary Kirkhorn would depart
Tesla
In a surprising turn of events, Tesla's CFO, Zachary Kirkhorn, known to many as the 'Master of Coin', has announced his resignation. Like any business, small or large, people come and go. But this isn't an average person at a normal company. Kirkhorn was deep in the trenches from the early days of the little start-up electric car company, and his departure leaves us only to speculate what happened and what happens now both at Tesla and for Kirkhorn.
Tesla Today and into the Future
The short answer to what happens now is Kirkhorn will stay on until the end of the year; however, his responsibilities have been handed over to Vaibhav Taneja, Tesla's Chief Accounting Officer since 2019 after joining the company in 2017 following the purchase of SolarCity.
Kirkhorn is going out with his head held high and still a true believer in Tesla's vision, as he is sticking around for four more months to help with the transition. In his LinkedIn post, which he only publicly posts about once a year, he said:
Being a part of this company is a special experience and I’m extremely proud of the work we’ve done together since I joined over 13 years ago.
Reason for Leaving is Unknown
There are no clues about what is next for Kirkhorn or why he is leaving. So, that would lead many to believe there must've been an issue at the top, Elon Musk. While that is certainly not out of the realm of possibility, both men seemed to be playing nice on social media. Kirkhorn stated on Linkedin, "I want to thank the talented, passionate, and hard-working employees at Tesla, who have accomplished things many thought not possible. I also want to thank Elon for his leadership and optimism, which has inspired so many people."
Musk posted on X.com, "I would like to thank Zach Kirkhorn for his many contributions to Tesla over the course of 13 often difficult years. Much appreciated, and best wishes for the next stage of his career."
Kirkhorn replaced Deepak Ahuja who left Tesla in 2019. Ahuja had been in the CFO role since 2010 the same year Kirhorn joined Tesla. Kirkhorn's rise through the ranks was both meteoric and pivotal. Serving in various capacities, including Senior Manager, Director, and Senior Director, he assumed the role of CFO in March 2019.
The Succession Plan
Succession at Tesla has been a concern for years, and it should be. We saw what happened when Musk bought Twitter and split his attention - the stock sank. We can only imagine what was happening behind the scenes. Still, when Musk committed to putting his attention back to Tesla, he implemented a hiring freeze and said all major personal decisions had to go through him.
Kirkhorn would've been on everyone's bingo card as a shortlist candidate to be the next CEO at Tesla, as his impact on the company's trajectory is indisputable. During his tenure, Kirkhorn played an essential role in transforming Tesla from a company fraught with losses to a consistently profitable enterprise. His expertise has been instrumental in Tesla's first quarterly profit, achieving a market valuation of over $1 trillion and strategizing the launch of products like Model 3 and the anticipated Cybertruck.
Kirkhorn's dedication to the company was undoubtedly monumental and likely far bigger than we will ever know, but he is replaceable. Just as we saw with the departure of Andrej Karpathy, the leader of the Full Self-Driving department, the company will continue. It's been a highly sought-after company for many bright minds to work at, and that kind of talent pool will help when the big players leave. But Tesla still has to come up with an answer for the succession plan for Elon Musk.
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Tesla has finally released their 2024 Impact Report, and it's filled with impressive new data on the company’s environmental and safety progress. However, the biggest news is the clear and concrete roadmap it provides for the next generation of Tesla products.
For the first time, the report provides specific timelines for Tesla to begin volume production of the purpose-built Cybercab and the ramp-up of the Semi factory. This year’s report shifts from documenting past achievements to defining Tesla’s next phase, with a focus on autonomy and industrial transport.
Upcoming Vehicles
The most significant new items in the report are timelines for Tesla’s anticipated future vehicles.
Next, Tesla is ramping up production of the Semi, following the completion of limited production runs used for testing. This development is closely tied to the ongoing construction of the new Semi Factory, which is nearing completion. Tesla expects this to be one of its largest markets going forward and one of the most impactful. Industrial trucks doing the last 200 miles of delivery account for 16.4% of US vehicle emissions, despite making up only 1.1% of vehicles on the road.
In terms of the Affordable Model, Tesla has mentioned that they intend to launch more affordable products in 2025 and address a key segment of the market. They did not elaborate on this further and seem to have missed the previously provided self-imposed deadline for the first half of 2025.
At this point, we’re unsure whether Tesla will actually launch a distinct and more affordable model or whether it will introduce cut-down versions of the Model Y, as rumored.
Safety
The report supports Tesla’s future plans with some impressive new data points that demonstrate the impact their technology is having.
First, Autopilot (and FSD) has achieved a safety record nearly 10 times higher than the US national average in terms of miles per incident. The data shows one accident for every 6.77 million miles driven with Autopilot (or FSD) engaged, compared to the national average of one accident per 0.70 million miles.
The report also highlighted the Cybertruck’s recent 5-Star overall safety rating from the NHTSA, marking it one of the safest vehicles on the market, especially for a truck. The best part is that Cybertruck holds the lowest overall probability of injury and the lowest rollover risk of any pickup truck ever tested by the agency. Skeptics have always complained about lacking crumple zones, but the results prove otherwise, with Tesla building crumple zones as part of the gigacast.
Sustainability
In terms of sustainability, Tesla’s growing fleet helped to increase the amount of reduced and avoided emissions by 60% year over year, to 32 million metric tons of CO2e. While that’s a small number when you compare it to a full country, it is still a significant impact, especially in cities where pollutants have already decreased due to the ownership of EVs.
Tesla also mentioned that 99% of their recalls reported in 2024 were resolved using OTA updates, saving owners a trip to the Service Center or a trip by the Tesla Mobile Rangers, all in the name of sustainability and reduced costs.
Impactful Report
Tesla’s 2024 Impact Report is actually one of the most forward-looking publications to date. It puts a clear roadmap of Tesla’s future goals, while also tying them into the sustainability and safety goals achieved last year.
We can’t wait till 2025’s report - because it’ll be even better with this year’s deployment of Robotaxi. You can read all 200+ pages of the impact report here.
Tesla has officially begun internal testing of its awaited virtual queueing system for Superchargers. The news was shared by Tesla’s Director of Charging, Max de Zegher on X.
The Tesla Charging team has begun pressure testing the new feature and is planning for public pilots as their next step. While most users won’t experience heavy congestion at Superchargers, for those who do, it could be a real pain point. Virtual queues are designed to make it easier to charge at congested Superchargers by having a digital queue, rather than relying on owners to remain in line with their vehicles.
Virtual Queues
When we originally delved into Tesla’s plans to introduce a virtual queue system, it seemed obvious that the virtual queue would replace the current “Wild West” first-come, first-served system of vehicles trying to get pulled into a stall. This process will likely have two key integrations.
First up is integration directly into the vehicle software for Tesla vehicles. This means that when you’re navigating to a Supercharger that’s busy and virtual queuing is enabled, you will be automatically placed into the virtual queue upon arrival.
Then, your position in line is displayed on-screen and provides an estimated wait time, allowing you to relax, eat, or take a bathroom break without worrying about your place in line. Finally, once a stall becomes available and it’s your turn, you will receive a notification on your vehicle’s screen, as well as on the Tesla app, directing you to the open stall that will presumably only allow your vehicle to charge. We imagine that there will be a grace period for owners to pull up with their car. If that doesn’t happen within a certain period, the next car will likely be offered the charger.
The second integration is in the Tesla app for non-Tesla drivers. As Tesla continues to install Magic Docks and open Superchargers to non-Tesla EVs, more and more traffic comes to the world’s most reliable fast charging network. That means that Tesla also needs to manage expectations and queue times for non-Tesla vehicles, likely through a similar process, but done over the Tesla app instead.
The Devil’s in the Details
A simple “first-in, first-out” queue sounds great, but Max noted that it is easy to exploit things with bad actors. What prevents a driver from joining a queue remotely to reserve a spot, ignoring a notification, or trying to hop into an unreserved spot?
Well, Tesla should be able to manage these fairly easily, but they still require technical effort to implement. That means GPS geofencing for those attempting to join a queue, a short countdown timer for those late to take their spot, and a lockout for those who try to skip the queue are all needed.
What’s Next?
As Tesla has just started internal testing of this feature, it likely means that public-facing user interfaces and flows aren’t quite ready yet, but the underlying functionality is. It also means that Tesla is working to refine the little details to make the process as smooth and as easily accessible as possible.
While no pilot locations have been announced yet, it seems likely that Tesla will launch the pilot at some of the most notoriously busy Supercharger sites to gather testing data in the near future, once internal testing is complete. That means holiday travel routes or major highways, likely in California first, before rolling out elsewhere.
Virtual Queuing is a fantastic tech-first solution for the Supercharger network that helps transform that experience into a more calm and orderly process. Additionally, establishing a fair system that allows both Tesla and non-Tesla EVs to access will likely improve the overall experience. Along with the pilot program for dynamic Supercharger pricing that incentivizes people to use less-congested Superchargers, these changes should improve the Supercharger experience.
While Max mentioned it was designed for “those rare cases with a wait”, that tends to be the experience in larger cities further North, especially in New York, Michigan, or within Canada, where the few smaller Supercharger sites in big cities tend to be heavily congested. These queues will make the experience smoother for everyone involved, so we’re looking forward to seeing this come to fruition.
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