Tesla executive in charge of solar roof is leaving the company ahead of the launch

After his brother and former CEO of SolarCity, Lyndon Rive, left Tesla last month, now Peter Rive, the former CTO and co-founder at SolarCity, is also leaving the company.

GreenTechMedia first reported his departure and Tesla confirmed in a statement today:

“We can confirm that Pete Rive will be leaving the company to explore new opportunities. As co-founder and CTO of SolarCity, Pete has played an instrumental role in expanding access to solar to hundreds of thousands of people across the country, helping to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy. Pete’s responsibilities, including work on Solar Roof, will be distributed among Tesla’s existing engineering teams. We want to thank Pete for everything he’s done for SolarCity and Tesla.”

Since Tesla’s acquisition of SolarCity, Rive was overseeing the development of the solar roof tiles, which are supposedly going into production this summer.

At SolarCity, Rive held several roles in the executive team since co-founding the company in 2006 and more recently he led the engineering team.

Following the acquisition in November 2016, there’s been a gradual integration of the solar installer into Tesla, which included some significant layoffs and restructuring.

Several executives ended up leaving Tesla after the acquisition and Rive is the latest of the bunch.

It comes as Tesla has been absorbing SolarCity’s operations and started phasing out the brand altogether by integrating sales into its own stores.

As for the solar roof, Tesla has partnered with Panasonic to get production started at Gigafactory 2 in Buffalo. The actual solar tiles were developed by Rive’s team at SolarCity in partnership with Tesla’s engineering team and now they will oversee production, which is due to start any day now, with Panasonic producing the solar cells.