Tesla Inc is revamping its organization in Asia to put more focus on China as the company prepares to start manufacturing in the world’s largest electric car market, people familiar with the matter said.
The company is dismantling its Asia-Pacific business unit and forming a new division for “greater China” that would cover China, as well as Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, the people said, asking not to be named as the plan has not been announced publicly.
Tom Zhu (朱曉彤), who last year took over as vice president of APAC operations from Robin Ren (任宇翔), would head the division, the people said.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is betting on China, Tesla’s biggest market after the US, to boost sales and restore investor confidence that has slumped along with the company’s stock this year.
Tesla is building a factory in Shanghai that is to start operating later this year and bolster competitiveness in a nation crowded with hundreds of electric vehicle rivals.
Zhu would continue to lead the Shanghai factory operation, which he took charge of last year after managing other aspects of Tesla’s China business, including the rollout of its supercharger stations.
He would also head sales and training for the nation and a number of other teams, the people said.
The Asia-Pacific region’s other teams would report to Tesla’s head office in Palo Alto, California, they said.
Tesla did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
FINANCIAL INCENTIVE
The need for Tesla to expand beyond the US was highlighted by its latest quarterly results, which missed analysts’ projections.
The halving of a US federal tax incentive for Tesla purchases starting in January dragged on US demand in the quarter, and Tesla struggled to offset that drop by starting deliveries of the Model 3 in Europe and China.
Tesla shares on Tuesday climbed as much as 4.3 percent, but the stock is still down 32 percent this year.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained