Tesla Senior Engineering Executive Bids Adieu

Tesla, the electric vehicle powerhouse, is saying goodbye to one of its top-ranking engineering minds. Colin Campbell, a senior executive who has been with Tesla since its early startup days, is making a big move. He’s heading over to a company established by none other than Tesla’s co-founder, JB Straubel.

When Campbell joined Tesla back in 2006, it was a budding startup with a vision – introducing an electric sports car, famously known as the Roadster.

As an early engineer on board, he witnessed and contributed to Tesla’s ascent, from its humble beginnings to becoming a global titan.

By 2016, Campbell had become the director of engineering for power electronics. His latest role? Vice President of powertrain. But after 17 remarkable years, he’s chosen a new path.

So, what’s next for Campbell? He’s diving into a venture alongside JB Straubel, his former colleague at Tesla. Straubel parted ways with Tesla in 2019 and established Redwood. The company’s goal is ambitious yet essential – developing a North American battery supply chain. This involves creating cathode and anode materials and promoting recycling.

On LinkedIn, Campbell shared his decision:

After 17 incredible years at Tesla, I’m excited to share that I will be joining Redwood Materials as CTO!

I had a once-in-a-lifetime experience at Tesla and, as an engineer, I can’t begin to summarize how many rewarding technical challenges I encountered while building our thrilling, safe, reliable, and increasingly affordable EVs. My time at the company began when we barely had a proof of concept and ends with millions of Teslas on the road worldwide. We not only made a difference on global emissions, but also forever influenced how the world thinks about transportation and helped to shape the product roadmaps of almost every other automaker. It’s been more rewarding and memorable than I could have imagined.

The most fulfilling part of working at Tesla – and the most difficult to leave behind – is the people. The mission and work attracted such talented, passionate, purposeful, kind, and dedicated colleagues. What a joy and privilege it has been to work alongside you and to see the impact of your work, globally, across so many industries.

At Redwood, I will continue to work on electrification – but this time, ensuring broad EV and clean energy adoption by solving problems further upstream!

Redwood’s mission is to create a circular battery supply chain, localizing the current fragmented system by creating critical battery components at scale in the US for the first time – and from an ever-increasing amount of recycled content.

I’m humbled and excited to join, learn from, lead, and grow a team that, while still in the first chapter, has already accomplished so much! This team is innovating across chemical, mechanical, electrical, and systems engineering – the future at Redwood is very exciting!

It seems the future is bright for both Tesla and Campbell. As Tesla continues its global dominance, Campbell embarks on a mission to shape the battery industry with Redwood. And with the visionaries like him and Straubel at the helm, Redwood’s future does seem very promising.