Meet Musk’s fixer, the powerful executive reshaping Tesla

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. When Tesla’s manufacturing executives gathered in Shanghai this January, some were surprised to see Elon Musk’s long-time aide Omead Afshar in attendance. The forum, hosted by Tesla’s most senior automotive executive, Tom Zhu, was designed to get the company’s global leadership team on the same page about best practices and the rising threat from electric-vehicle makers in China.

But Afshar, Musk’s former project manager and confidant, wasn’t a manufacturing executive at the time. In fact, it wasn’t clear to many that he was even employed at Tesla, people familiar with the events said. At Tesla, many people hadn’t seen him since 2022, when he moved to two of Musk’s other companies after an internal investigation raised questions about his role in a suspicious materials purchase at the Texas factory, according to people familiar with the events.

Afshar’s attendance at the Shanghai forum was a sign of things to come. In the months since, the man known at Tesla as Musk’s fixer ascended the ranks to become one of the most powerful executives at the electric-car maker. He returned to Giga Texas, Tesla’s headquarters in Austin, in early 2024 as Musk restructured his leadership team and laid off more than 10% of the company, people familiar with the events said.

This fall, the 37-year-old Afshar was officially promoted to vice president, overseeing sales and vehicle manufacturing in North America and Europe—two regions previously overseen by Zhu, The Wall Street Journal earlier reported. Afshar, Tesla and Musk didn’t return requests for comment. A Californian who joined Tesla seven years ago, Afshar once ran Tesla’s office of the CEO and oversaw construction of Tesla’s 10-million-square-foot