Tesla loses two of its top car designers
Tesla has lost two of its top car designers, including a founding member of its design studio, amid a broader talent exodus.
After a few years designing concept cars for GM, David Imai joined Tesla in 2011, when the automaker was a little-known California company trying to ramp up production of the Roadster and bring Model S, its first EV built from the ground up, to production.
He quickly became Tesla’s manager of exterior and interior design.
Imai was promoted to “Director of Design” in 2019. He has been credited for several design aspects of the Model 3. Along with Bernard Lee and Franz Von Holzhausen, he was one of Tesla’s earliest and longest standing car designer.
Earlier this month, Imai confirmed that he has left his role at Tesla to join Arc, a manufacturer of electric boats. He announced on LinkedIn:
I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be joining Arc Boats later this month as Chief Designer. In this new role, I hope to bring my experience, leadership, and passion for design to help Arc reach new horizons.
Looking into Tesla’s design team, Electrek also found that another top Tesla car designer whose departure from Tesla went unreported.
Bernard Lee came to Tesla from Mazda along with Franz von Holzhausen, Tesla’s chief designer, back in 2008. Along with von Holzhausen, he was one of the founding members of Tesla’s design studio.
His first tenure at Tesla lasted a decade during which he was credited as lead and supporting designer of many Tesla vehicles:
- 2017 Supporting Exterior Designer 2nd Gen Tesla Roadster
- 2017 Principle Exterior Designer of Model 3 Final Production
- 2016 Principle Exterior Designer of Model S 2016 Production Refresh
- 2016 Principle Exterior Designer of Model 3 Prototype
- 2015 Principle Exterior Designer of Model X Final Production
- 2012 Principle Exterior Designer of Model X Prototype
- 2012 Supporting Exterior Designer of Model S Final Production
- 2009 Supporting Interior Designer of Model S Prototype
He briefly left in 2018 to teach at the Art Center College of Design in California, where many Tesla car designers come from, but he came back in 2020.
Lee was then credited with several more designs at Tesla following his return:
- 2024 Senior Exterior Design Manager Cyber Cab Demo and Production vehicle
- 2024 Senior Exterior Manager Model 3 (highland) Standard and Performance
- 2021 Senior Exterior Design Manager Model X refresh
We now learn that Lee has also left Tesla. He updated his LinkedIn profile to confirm he left in November 2024, but his departure wasn’t reported until now.
Electrek’s Take
Congrats to both Imai and Lee who are responsible for, in my opinion, some great designs that helped the electric revolution.
At a time when automakers were often producing weird designs for electric vehicles that felt like they didn’t want to sell, Imai, Lee, and their team produced fresh yet simple designs that are still beautiful 10 years later.
Tesla still has several talented car designers on its staff, but it’s certainly going to hurt to have two of Tesla’s top car designers leaving in the space of a few months.
It’s also happening amid a broader exodus of talent at Tesla that has been going for a year since a wave of layoffs last year hurt moral at the company.
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In a move that helps the brand duck protectionist anti-Chinese tariffs, Volvo Cars has switched production of its award-winning EX30 models destined for US roads from its Zhangjiakou plant in China to the Ghent facility in Belgium.
Volvo EX30 production began in the company’s Ghent factory back in April, but those first cars were earmarked for the Swedish domestic and European export markets, but that move wasn’t primarily motivated by avoiding tariffs. As Electrive reports, the company seemed happy enough to continue importing its small electric crossover from China and accepting the new 28.8% tariffs (up from 10%), but the wait times to get the vehicles shipped in from China was imply too long.
In 2024, Swedish and German buyers had to wait up to eight months for their EX30 in some cases, according to Volvo Cars’ European boss, Arek Nowinski, per Automotive News. Once production in Ghent is fully up to speed, however, wait times should be cut to about 90 days. Those wait times, and the price hike associated with the tariffs, have hurt sales of the originally Chinese-made Volvo EV. In 2024, for example, the EX30 ranked third in European EV sales, but slipped out of the top 10 first half of 2025.
“The car is now being built in Europe, which means faster delivery times,” Volvo Cars CEO Hakan Samuelsson to Automotive News. “We should return to the sales and market share figures for the EX30 that we had before the introduction of tariffs.”
Coming to Staying in America
The EX30’s switch to Ghent is good news for American fans of the compact, lickety-quick Volvo EV. Now that it’s no longer exclusively made in China, Volvo has decided to give it a stay of execution as it revamps its US product lineup to better align with market trends (read: SUVs) and the changing political landscape (read: tariffs and inflation).
The reason? The Made in China version of the EX30 would virtually unsellable in the US due to the implementation of 147% tariffs on vehicles imported from China. Vehicles imported from Europe, meanwhile, carry just 15% tariffs, keeping the EX30 in a competitive price bracket.
Expect to see both Ghent and South Carolina play an increasingly large role in Volvo’s US product mix – at least for the next three-odd years.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Volvo Cars, Automotive News, via Electrive.
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New filings have revealed that BYD is about to release a ridiculous 3,000 hp electric supercar: the Yangwang U9 Track Edition.
BYD already shocked the world when it launched the Yangwang U9, its first all-electric supercar.
It featured four advanced electric motors with a combined power of nearly 1,300 horsepower. The U9 can accelerate from 0 to 62 mph (0 to 100 km/h) in just 2.36 seconds.
With a motor at each wheel and a highly advanced electric-air suspension, the U9 can turn on itself and even jump over potholes.
But that was only the beginning.
Based on a new filing with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), BYD is preparing to launch a new ‘Track Edition’ of the Yangwang U9:
When an automaker releases a “track” version of a car, it typically primarily features body changes for better aerodynamic performance, adding downforce, and it will also often feature bigger brakes.
The Yangwang U9 ‘Track Edition’ appears to feature all that… and much more.
The filing reveals that BYD updated the motors at each wheel to a new 555 kW motor. That’s a higher-performing motor than in most performance electric vehicles. The U9 Track Edition has four of them for a total of 2,220 kW (3,019 hp).
I would have thought that this was a typo if it wasn’t for the insane electric vehicles coming out of China these days.
Here are a few pictures from the MIIT filing:
There are a lot of performance specs that are not included in the MIIT filing. Therefore, it will be interesting to see when the vehicle is fully unveiled and BYD reveals what kind of performance it can achieve with 3,000 hp packed in 4 electric motors.
Here are a few other features mentioned in the filing:
Standard features:
- 20-inch wheels with 325/35 R20 tyres
- Carbon-fibre roof
- Large fixed carbon-fibre rear wing
- Rear diffuser with adjustable blades for aerodynamic optimisation
Optional aerodynamic parts:
- Standard or enhanced carbon-fibre front splitter
- Electric rear wing
Electrek’s Take
How are they going to keep that thing from flying away? Seriously.
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