Tesla just canned a bigwig and denies hiring a ‘Head of Autonomy’ from GM
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Elon Musk and the leadership at Tesla are making moves as Q2 2025 comes to a close. Most notably, the EV brand sacked its operations boss for North America and Europe just days after he celebrated the Austin, Texas, rollout of the new Robotaxi program. If that wasn’t enough, the brand denied hiring Henry Kuang, a former autonomous vehicles lead with GM.
Tesla fired Omead Afshar, a senior executive, just as it denies hiring Henry Kuang, GM’s former ‘Head of Autonomy’
Another day, another set of headlines featuring Tesla. Most recently, the electric automaker fired Omead Afshar, an engineer-turned-head-of-operations for North America and Europe. But a shakeup wasn’t out of the realm of possibility; the brand’s sales have been nothing short of dismal in Europe, and brand identity took a beating in North America in the first two quarters of 2025. But sacking Afshar is a big development for the company.
Despite being called “Musk’s fixer,” the automaker removed Afshar yesterday, per Forbes. Afshar, who started his career with Tesla as an engineer in 2017, rose to become one of Elon Musk’s closest lieutenants. He eventually became a vice president for the company and headed operations in North America and Europe. However, his appointment couldn’t withstand the slumping sales and Tesla’s tarnished brand image in both markets.
The figures look especially poor in Europe, where the electric automaker posted negative sales for a fifth consecutive month. Year-over-year, the brand is looking at a 27.9% decline from May 2024 to May of this year.
The news arrives alongside the news that Tesla had hired Henry Kuang, GM’s former Cruise autonomous vehicles program boss, to the position of “Director of AI/Deep Learning for Autonomous Driving.” At least, it looked that way. But, according to Electrek, Tesla publicly denied the move earlier today, claiming the update on Kuang’s LinkedIn profile might be incorrect.
Autonomous driving is, of course, a hot topic for the Austin-based EV brand. After all, the recent Robotaxi rollout pitted specially-equipped, self-driving Model Ys against Central Texas streets and traffic. The launch marks some of the first tangible steps in Musk’s vision for the brand, namely, autonomous vehicles taking some of the focus from drivable models like the Cybertruck and Model Y.
