The Head of the Cybertruck Program Quit Tesla. The Model Y Leader Left Hours Later

If we assume for a moment that Tesla’s recent sales declines are entirely due to faulty management, specifically caused by people with the job title “program manager,†then Tesla is well in its way to massive improvements. The Cybertruck program manager—who also managed the Model 3—just exited the company, followed just hours later by the Model Y program manager.

In the third quarter of this year, Tesla sold 5,385 Cybertrucks, a 63% drop from the same point in 2024. According to an October story in Electrek, Musk’s companies SpaceX and xAI are buying up excess Cybertruck inventory. There was a recall last month of 63,000 Cybertrucks due to the headlights being too intense, and that came after the more notorious March recall of 46,000 Cybertrucks after an embarrassing mishap kept occurring where a thin piece of decorative Cyber-metal held on with glue kept falling off and revealing the very un-Cyber-car guts underneath.

“I recently made one of the hardest decisions of my life,†wrote former Cybertruck program manager Siddhant Awasthi in a LinkedIn post on Sunday. There’s no actual explanation for the decision just a lot of praise for the company. And to be clear, we encountered no evidence Awasthi was asked to leave. He may simply be moving on to greener pastures. 

Awasthi notes in his post that his signature accomplishments at Tesla occurred “all before hitting 30.†Indeed, it appears that in 2017, when he was 23, he was a student at the University of Cincinnati working on a school project related to the Musk-led “Hyperloop†concept. The eight-year Tesla tenure Awasthi describes in his LinkedIn post indicates that he joined Tesla around that same time.

According to Reuters, it was only “hours later†that Emmanuel Lamacchia, who held the same job title as Awasthi also left Tesla. “What a journey it’s been,†Lamacchia’s LinkedIn post began.

According to Car and Driver, the Model Y is the bestselling EV in the country, despite 2025 sales being down 23 percent from the same point in 2024.

Reuters’ story on Lamacchia’s exit notes that “several senior program managers†have left Tesla over the past year. One of those, David Zhang, led the Model S and Model X programs.

Gizmodo asked Tesla why Awasthi and Lamacchia left the company, and will update if we hear back.

Late last month on a rambling Tesla earnings call, Elon Musk said “corporate terrorists†might stand in the way of shareholders pledging to award him a pay package that would make him a trillionaire. But shareholders ended up making that pledge after all and now he’ll be a trillionaire if Tesla accomplishes a certain set of goals.

Some of those goals involve selling cars, but most involve transitioning Tesla into the futuristic, automation-and-robots company Elon Musk has been promising recently—goals like deploying 1 million robotaxis and 1 million humanoid robots. Presumably Tesla and Musk will need bold and competent program managers to accomplish these feats on his behalf.