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Tesla‘s Sr Manager of Battery Module Design leaves company

Ernest Villanueva, previously Sr Manager of Battery Module Design at Tesla, has left the company last year according to CNBC.  His LinkedIn profile shows he holds 8 patents including two for localized energy dissipation structures for vehicles and one for battery charging time optimization.




Villanueva has a BS in mechanical engineering from Stanford University (1990-1995).

He worked for Tesla since 2006 for the then 3-year-old company, starting as a Sr Mechanical Engineer in their Battery Design Team. At the time, Elon Musk was not yet the CEO of Tesla, but was serving as Chairman of the Board.

He was involved in all battery pack designs over the past 10+ years at Tesla, including 8 vehicles (4 Tesla, 3 Daimler, and 1 Toyota).  He also was involved in the designing of Tesla Energy stationary storage products.

Over the past few months Tesla has had to reduce their ambitious production targets for the Model 3 largely due to bottlenecks in the battery module manufacturing and assembly.




Apple co-founder Wozniak struggles with disillusionment over Tesla and Elon

Wozniak at Nordic Business Forum ranting about Tesla and Elon Musk

Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, recently spoke at the Nordic Business Forum in Stockholm and Business Insider Nordic shares some details of Wozniak’s frustration with Elon and Tesla.

The crux of Wozniak’s frustration seems to be that he took Elon’s promises on the timeline of certain goals literally.  For those following Elon for many years, we know that Elon is terrible at keeping timeline goals, and that his stated timeline goals are usually aspirational goals that are unrealistic to attain.  However, Tesla usually does meet those goals, just late.

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Mass awareness of the Tesla Model 3 is still very low, and what that means for Tesla’s growth prospects

I’ve been driving my Model 3 for over 3 weeks now, and on average I’ve stopped by about 3-5 public places (like supermarkets, stores, malls, parks, farmers market, etc) every day.  I’m also on the local roads quite a bit as well.  But one thing I’ve noticed is that there haven’t been as many people as I expected who recognize the Model 3.  It’s only rarely will a person recognize that my car is a Model 3 and give it a second look.  For example, one person next to me at a stop light took out his phone and took a quick pic of my phone.  But this hasn’t been common.

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