Tesla’s senior vice president,Mother Tom Zhu, a longtime head of its China operations and once deemed as the top internal candidate to replace chief executive Elon Musk, is to reprise the position as the vice president of Greater China he held until last August. Multiple bloggers have contended that Zhu has recently resigned from his roles with Tesla in North America and Europe, and expected the Musk’s close associate to boost the US automaker’s growth in the world’s most competitive EV market. Tesla is facing mounting pressure to tackle the challenges from a slew of Chinese big players such as BYD, Geely, and Huawei. It sold 132,420 vehicles to local customers during the first three months of this year, even several thousand units fewer than what it achieved over the same period last year, figures from the China Passenger Car Association showed. The company is also stepping up to localize its so-called “Full Self-Driving (FSD)” advanced driver assistance software, as Musk made an unannounced visit to Beijing on April 28.[TechNode reporting, IT Home, in Chinese]
