TESLA has appointed Omead Afshar, regarded as one of Elon Musk’s closest confidantes, to oversee its operations in Europe and North America following an executive exodus in the lead-up to the recent ‘We, Robot’ event.

Mr Afshar, who worked in the ‘Office of the CEO’ is now a vice president overseeing manufacturing and sales, said a report by the Wall Street Journal.

His direct reports include Troy Jones, the vice president of North America sales and service, and Jason Shawhan, the director of manufacturing for Tesla in Texas.

Omead Afshar

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has also promoted other lieutenants to run to key parts of the business including self-driving and Optimus, the name of Tesla’s humanoid robot.

In recent weeks Tesla has reportedly lost four senior executives, including chief information officer Nagesh Saldi, senior public policy and business development director Jos Dings, external relations director Marc Van Impe and chief operating officer of autonomous driving David Zhang.

Ashok Elluswamy is now vice president of Autopilot and AI software, and Milan Kovac is vice president of Optimus. Both changes were reflected on LinkedIn.

The additional responsibilities were given to them prior to Tesla’s unveiling of the Cybercab last week.

Automotive News said Elon Musk has a long history of shuffling executives from one part of his empire to another or sharing them across his companies.

Tesla has just three named executive officers: Elon Musk, chief financial officer Vaibhav Taneja and senior vice president of Automotive Tom Zhu.