(Reuters) -Tesla Inc’s China chief Tom Zhu has been promoted to take charge of the electric carmaker’s U.S. assembly plants as well as sales operations in North America and Europe, according to an internal posting of reporting lines reviewed by Reuters.
The Tesla posting showed that Zhu’s title had not changed and that he also retained his responsibilities as Tesla’s most senior executive for China and sales in the rest of Asia as of Tuesday, in addition to the expanded role.
The move makes Zhu the highest-profile executive at Tesla after Elon Musk, with oversight for deliveries in all of its major markets and all of its production outside the still-ramping Tesla plant in Germany.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Reuters reviewed the organizational chart that had been posted internally by Tesla and confirmed the change with two people who had seen it. They asked not to be named because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.
Zhu and a team of his reports were brought in by Tesla late last year to troubleshoot production issues in the United States, driving an expectation among his colleagues then that he was being groomed for a bigger role.
Zhu’s appointment to a global role comes at a time when Musk has been distracted by his acquisition of Twitter and Tesla analysts and investors have urged action that would deepen the senior executive bench and allow him to focus on Tesla.
Under Zhu, Tesla’s Shanghai plant rebounded strongly from COVID lockdowns in China.
Tesla said on Monday that it had delivered 405,278 vehicles in the fourth quarter, short of Wall Street estimates, according to data compiled by Refinitiv.
The company had delivered 308,600 vehicles in the same period a year earlier.
(Reporting by Zhang Yan in Shanghai and Hyunjoo Jin in Seould; Writing by Kevin Krolicki; Editing by Stephen Coates)