BEIJING (Reuters) – Tesla Inc. is seeking a design director in China as part of efforts to open a “full-function” studio in Shanghai or Beijing and design electric cars to suit the tastes of Chinese consumers, according to three people with knowledge of it matters.
Human resources officials from the U.S. vehicle manufacturer, as well as several bounty hunters, have been dragging the industry for the past four months, sources said.
They are looking for “bi-cultural” candidates with 20 or more years of experience who are familiar with Chinese tastes and can bridge the differences between China and the United States, they added.
Some candidates have been interviewed by Tesla’s head of global design, Franz von Holzhausen, according to people, although it was unclear how many potential candidates had been approached by the company and recruiters.
The three sources spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity and confidential nature of the matter.
Tesla and von Holzhausen did not respond to requests for comments via email.
According to consulting firm LMC Automotive, China is the largest automotive market in the world, in addition to the largest for all-electric vehicles, with a sales volume that will reach approximately 1.5 million vehicles this year. It is also Tesla’s No. 2 market after the United States.
The vehicle manufacturer’s plans for the design studio are not fully developed and sources believe Tesla will wait for more clarity on the strained US-China relations under a new US president before making a final decision. about the move and all its details.
The search for talent, which according to sources focused mainly on China, fits in with comments from Tesla boss Elon Musk earlier last year.
“I think it would be great … to create an engineering and design center in China to design an original car in China for global consumption. I think it would be very exciting,” he said at a media event in Shanghai.
ACTIVITY RANGE
Musk’s interest in developing cars in China is part of Tesla’s broader drive to increase the company’s overall sales volume well beyond the 500,000-year-old vehicle mark, which reached 450 percent of to arrive in 2020.
The three sources said that Tesla’s search for a studio director in China began in September and that there was a lot of activity until December, when several headhunters used LinkedIn and other media to approach them. to the candidates.
One source, who is aware of Tesla’s head-hunting activities in China, said that once a design director was hired, Tesla would recruit the director’s team, which would likely have about 20 troops and include designers and modelers who helped turn design representations into mud models.
All sources said the planned center was intended to be a complete design team, with one describing it as a “full-function study,” which would not only help conceptualize the design of a car, but would also arrive at the final shape: three digital -dimensional data: of a model.
The data could be handed over to Tesla vehicle engineers, who are based mostly in northern California.
Two sources said the Chinese Tesla study would likely also conduct research on the tastes of Chinese consumers, as well as work for cars expected to take place at Tesla’s vehicle assembly plant in Shanghai. , where designs are reduced to ensure specific components fit engineers. specifications.
“They want to make vehicle design much more biased towards China; they have already done a lot of things here, setting up a major manufacturing center and selling a ton of electric vehicles, but it looks like Tesla is ready to take root, ”said one source.
That boost could lead to a more independent China Tesla, the person added, who has spent more than a decade in the country working in design centers run by global carmakers, among other places.
Chinese consumers bought about 145,000 Tesla vehicles last year, accounting for about a third of the company’s overall volume, LMC said.
$ 25,000 ELECTRIC CAR
Two sources said a likely “China-specific” model was a lower-cost volume generator, such as a $ 25,000 electric car Musk was referring to at a Battery Day event in September, which said Tesla could try to bring it to market in about three years.
Musk said Tesla is confident it will be able to hit the market with “a very compelling $ 25,000 electric vehicle that is also fully autonomous.”
At that price, according to two sources, as well as industry experts, it was likely to be a compact car, smaller than Tesla’s Model 3, that would be as affordable as some conventional gasoline vehicles.
Compact cars are not big sellers in the United States where larger, taller vehicles, such as the Ford F-150 pickup truck and SUVs, as well as mid-size sedans, rule the road.
They account for approximately 10% of the global vehicle market in the United States. By contrast, compacts account for 25% of sales in China, or about 5-6 million cars a year, according to consulting firm LMC Automotive.
That’s why the $ 25,000 projected car that Musk has commented on would be more suitable for the Chinese market, according to both industry sources and experts.
“A compact Tesla car would do well in China as well as the rest of Asia and Europe,” said Yale Zhang, head of Shanghai-based automotive consultancy Foresight. “It could seriously hurt car sales like the Toyota Corolla and the Volkswagen Golf.”
Reports by Norihiko Shirouzu; Additional reports from Paul Lienert in Detroit; Edited by Pravin Char