Tesla $25,000 electric car: Franz von Holzhausen features in Tesla China chief designer recruitment video

Tesla chief designer Franz von Holzhausen features in a new recruitment video for a chief designer for Tesla China. That person will be expected to lead the design of the automaker’s upcoming $25,000 electric car.

Last year, Tesla announced plans to establish a new R&D and design center in China to build “a Chinese-style” electric car.

Tesla started taking design submissions for its Chinese-made small electric car last summer and started hiring for the program shortly afterward.

The new group within Tesla is expected to, as its first task, design a recently announced $25,000 electric car. It will be produced in China and exported globally.

CEO Elon Musk indicated that he wants to use the project to attract local engineering and design talent in China to the automaker.

As Musk puts it, talented Chinese engineers and designers generally prefer to work on original projects instead of adaptations of vehicles designed and engineered in the US. This is currently the case for the vehicles Tesla produces at Gigafactory Shanghai in China.

While Tesla has been trying to recruit people for the last year, it looks like the automaker is still looking for a local chief designer.

Here’s the new video:

In the video, someone approaches the designer with a tablet to show him something, and the design executive seems impressed and asks, “Who did this?”

There’s no answer in the video, but Tesla seems to want the answer to be yourself, as it links to a job listing for a chief designer role at Tesla’s new Chinese design studio.

The automaker wrote in the job description:

As a Leader at Tesla’s China Design Studio, you will be responsible for leading the design development of Tesla vehicles. You will be part of the team that creates and executes world-class vehicles in terms of form, function, and luxury. 

Using your considerable production design experience and innovative thinking, you will be responsible for leading a team of design studio professionals in creating future products. Our design team prides itself on being multitalented and flexible, and we look for the same in our potential candidates.

It’s unclear when the new design and engineering team at Tesla will deliver the new $25,000 electric car, but it could be sooner rather than later since Tesla has recently submitted a third vehicle for government approval for production at Gigafactory Shanghai.

At its Battery Day last year, Tesla said that the vehicle would be enabled by its new 4680 battery cell and structural battery pack technology.