Tesla has dismissed Evan Horetsky, also known as ‘Mister Giga’, the engineer behind Tesla’s construction projects and more recently leading Gigafactory Berlin construction, according to a German report.
Horetsky is a mechanical engineer who joined Tesla back in 2015 to work on the Gigafactory Nevada project.
He has since participated in most of Tesla’s construction projects around the world and most recently, he was put in charge of Tesla’s Gigafactory Berlin project.
In Germany, he recently gained some attention with a profile in the Berliner Morgenpost that revealed Tesla employees refer to him as “Mister Gigafactory” (translated from German):
“It is said that employees at Tesla also like to call Horetsky “Mister Gigafactory”. Because building “Giga Berlin” is not his first job. The American previously pulled up the gigafactory in Shanghai, China, among other things, but also oversaw Tesla projects in Fremont, California, and New York.”
The engineer commented on the article at the time:
“I’m flattered and honored, but really prefer “Giga Meister”. This is about Tesla though, and our in house construction team not many know about. Every corner of Tesla requires presence, aggressive problem solving, creativity, data driven decisions, and humble teamwork. I’m simply lucky to have great mentors along the way.”
The Gigafactory Berlin project seems to be going well with rapid progress based on frequent visual reports by drone flyovers and CEO Elon Musk praised the team for the progress after a visit of the site last month.
However, we’ve now heard that Horetsky, whose official position at Tesla is Director, Engineering, Procurement, Construction Gigafactory Berlin, has been fired.
RBB24 reported (translated from German):
“The Tesla company fired the project manager for the factory construction in Grünheide. The company does not want to comment on the reasons, industry experts suspect a connection with initially unpaid water bills.”
We reported last week on the water bill incident, which reportedly resulted in Tesla having its water shut off at the Gigafactory Berlin site.
It apparently briefly affected work at the site, but Tesla paid the bill and the water was turned back on quickly.
We reached out to Horetzky for a comment on the RBB24 report, but we haven’t received a response yet.
Electrek’s Take
That’s a bummer.
It seemed like Horetsky was an important asset for Tesla in its many construction projects.
Regardless of what happened, I hope he gets quickly picked up by another company and helps rapidly build more electric vehicle factories because we need a lot more of those — from Tesla and other automakers.
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Author: Fred Lambert
Source: Electrek
