Tesla loses its director of Western Europe

Tesla has lost several executives lately and now another one has been added to the list: Georg Ell, the man in charge of Tesla’s Western Europe operations, has left the automaker last month.

Ell joined Tesla in 2014 to lead the company in the UK, but he has since been awarded the responsibilities of Tesla in Ireland, Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg.

The executive wrote on his LinkedIn page that his teams comprised of about 330 people across 37 locations.

He added:

“Georg served as Director for Western Europe at Tesla Motors, where he led an outstanding team of passionate people focussed on customers, growth, and the company’s mission to accelerate the world’s movement to sustainable energy. He joined Tesla when the UK had just one store, no service capacity and few people had heard of Tesla.”

He left his position at Tesla last month to become the new CEO at Smoothwall, a UK-based company providing web filtering and monitoring solutions.

Ell told Electrek about his departure from Tesla:

“No major dramas here, I love Tesla with all my heart and have every faith in the company, but got an opportunity to be a CEO for the first time and decided to go for it. My new company, Smoothwall, is also highly mission driven, protecting people – particularly children – from bad stuff online, in both UK and US schools. I am (very) happy with the legacy I leave behind at Tesla, the amazing team I built and I know they will go on to do great things. I’m now eagerly awaiting Model 3 in the UK!”

Tesla confirmed that they hired Myriam Attou, a sales executive from the fashion industry, will be leading the company’s sales in the UK, Netherlands, Central Europe and the Middle East. Attou previously worked at Burberry, along with Tesla’s head of sales Ganesh Srivats, who was a senior VP at the British fashion house before joining the automaker.

Ell’s departure follows several other executives leaving Tesla in the last few months, including Jim Keller, VP of Autopilot, last week, Matthew Renna, Tesla’s Model S and Model X program manager, Jason Mendez, senior director for manufacturing engineering, and Will McColl, senior manager for equipment engineering.