• Drew Baglino, Tesla's SVP of powertrain and electrical engineering, resigned from Tesla on Sunday.
  • Baglino's departure came shortly before Tesla laid off 10% of its workforce.
  • The executive had worked at Tesla for over 18 years.

Drew Baglino, Tesla's senior vice president of powertrain and electrical engineering, announced he'd left the company, becoming the latest major executive to depart Elon Musk's EV giant after the CFO stepped down in August last year. The move came as Tesla announced sweeping job cuts.

"I made the difficult decision to move on from Tesla after 18 years yesterday," Baglino wrote on X on Monday. "I am so thankful to have worked with and learned from the countless incredibly talented people at Tesla over the years. I loved tackling nearly every problem we solved as a team and feel gratified to have contributed to the mission of accelerating the transition to sustainable energy, a mission that I am quite passionate about."

Tesla's vice president of public policy and business development, Rohan Patel, also said on Monday he'd left. Patel told TechCrunch that he departed due to "[b]ig overall changes" at Tesla.

Baglino and Patel did not immediately respond to a request from Business Insider for comment, nor did a spokesperson from Tesla. However, CEO Musk responded to X posts from both execs thanking them for everything they'd done.

Baglino joined the company in 2006 — only two years after Tesla CEO Elon Musk first began investing in the automaker — and started out as an electrical engineer working on the company's very first car, the Roadster.

By the time he left, he had become one of only four execs named as "leadership" on Tesla's investor relations page, alongside Musk himself, CFO Vaibhav Taneja, and Tom Zhu, senior vice-president of automotive. Baglino was in charge of the technology behind the company's energy products, including batteries and motors for the cars.

EV blog Electrek noted on Monday morning that Baglino had already lost his Tesla company badge — a red symbol next to his name — on X shortly before he announced his departure on the platform. X is also owned by Musk.

Baglino appears to have resigned less than 24 hours before Tesla announced a round of job cuts impacting about 10% of its workforce. Multiple Tesla employees told Business Insider there had been concerns of impending layoffs going into the weekend as rumors spread throughout the company that some managers had been told to provide upper management with a list of names.

Earlier this month, Tesla delivery numbers appeared to show a slow in EV demand. The company's stock is down about 33% year-to-date.

Tesla saw another key executive depart last year. CFO Zachary Kirkhorn, who was rumored to be under consideration for the role of successor to Musk, left the company in August after 13 years.

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