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High-ranking Tesla executive departs after decade-long run at the company: 'It's hard to put into words'

"I never imagined the places this job would take me, or the impact I would be able to have."

"I never imagined the places this job would take me, or the impact I would be able to have."

Photo Credit: Depositphotos.com

Another longtime high-ranking Tesla employee has left the company.

Mark Westfall, who led a team of 50 engineers working on energy products, announced in April that he had left Tesla, Electrek reported. He worked on such projects as Supercharger, Powerwall, and Megapack.

Westfall had worked at the electric vehicle pioneer for 10 years.

"It's hard to put into words what Tesla has meant to me," Westfall wrote on LinkedIn. "I never imagined the places this job would take me, or the impact I would be able to have."

According to Electrek, Westfall left to become director of engineering at Redwood Materials, which itself has many ties to Tesla. The company buys scrap materials from Tesla's battery-manufacturing process, which it then recycles to create new battery materials.

Tesla co-founder and board member JB Straubel founded Redwood, and several of its executives are former Tesla employees.

Westfall became the latest high-ranking employee to leave Tesla so far in 2025. It has also said goodbye to the head of its Indian market, a vice president of software engineering, the technical program manager for its Cortex supercomputer, and two of its top automotive designers.

This mass departure of talent comes at a time when Tesla's business has been slipping. The company's 2025 first-quarter sales numbers are down globally, and its net income dropped 71% from Q1 2024.

Overall, however, EV sales continue to grow as more people discover the environmental and economic benefits of switching to an EV. Although some models cost more up front than their gas-powered counterparts, EVs typically have much lower maintenance costs and don't require regular, costly fill-ups.

The ownership costs can come down even more when an owner pairs their EV with solar panels, which allow EV drivers to rely less on public charging stations and avoid reliance on the grid for recharging at home. Those interested in solar can save up to $10,000 on installation costs by using EnergySage's free service to compare local, vetted installers.

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