Tesla Cybertruck program manager Siddhant Avasti announced his resignation after more than eight years at the company. His story is a classic example of how Tesla cultivates its own managers from within, having almost completely abandoned the practice of hiring top executives from outside.
Avasti started with the Hyperloop project, then interned at Tesla and joined the company immediately after graduating in 2018. Within just two years, he became an engineering manager, and a year later, the senior technical program manager, responsible for implementing the 48-volt electrical architecture in the Cybertruck. Such a career leap is rare even in Silicon Valley and indicates a significant level of trust from the management.
At the end of 2022, before the start of serial production, Avasti headed the entire Cybertruck program. This period turned out to be the most difficult for him — Tesla faced the gap between grandiose plans and reality. The company expected to produce about 250,000 electric pickups annually, but actual sales, according to Electrek, do not exceed 25,000 units. The model, called a revolution in 2019, turned out to be more expensive, less practical, and had a lower range than buyers expected. The Cybertruck quickly became a symbol not of a technological breakthrough, but of Elon Musk’s inflated expectations.
In his post on the X platform, Avasti called the resignation “one of the most difficult decisions in life.” He recalled that over eight years of work, he managed to contribute to the launch of the Model 3, the launch of Gigafactory Shanghai, and the development of new electronic systems for the entire Tesla lineup. After the Cybertruck release, he also took responsibility for the Model 3 program — part of a large-scale internal reorganization of the company after a wave of layoffs.
Experts emphasize that the Cybertruck’s failure should not be attributed to specific managers — most of the mistakes were strategic. The initial 2019 prototype differed significantly from the 2023 serial version, creating a gap between Musk’s promises and the product’s actual characteristics. As a result, the Cybertruck became a painful but instructive experience for Tesla: even the boldest ideas can shatter against the cold metal of reality.