Tesla appoints Indian-origin Vaibhav Taneja as CFO

Tesla Inc. has appointed Indian-origin Vaibhav Taneja as the new chief financial officer. Taneja will succeed Zachary Kirkhorn who stepped down as CFO on August 4 after a thirteen-year stint with the carmaker.

Taneja will take over as CFO in addition to his current role as chief accounting officer of Tesla, the world's most valued automaker.

"Prior to this appointment as CFO, Taneja, 45, served as Tesla's Chief Accounting Officer since March 2019, as Corporate Controller from May 2018, and as Assistant Corporate Controller between February 2017 and May 2018," the carmaker says in an SEC filing.

Taneja has also served in various finance and accounting roles at SolarCity Corporation sice March 2016. Prior to that, Taneja was employed at PricewaterhouseCoopers in both India and the U.S. between July 1999 and March 2016.

Kirkhorn, the outgoing CFO, will continue to serve Tesla through the end of the year to support the transition.

"Kirkhorn stepped down as of August 4, after a thirteen-year tenure with the company, the last four years of which he has served as Master of Coin and Chief Financial Officer. During his tenure, Tesla has seen tremendous expansion and growth. Tesla thanks Mr. Kirkhorn for his significant contributions," the filing says.

The world's largest automaker in terms of market capitalisation reported a net income of $2.7 billion in the second quarter, up 20% from the corresponding period a year ago. Tesla's revenue stood at $24.9 billion, nearly 50% more than $16.9 billion in Q2 2022.

The appointment of Taneja comes at a time when the carmaker is looking to set up a factory in India to produce low-cost EVs. In June, Tesla CEO Elon Musk met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New York and said he is confident that Tesla will be in India as soon as humanly possible.

"I would like to thank the Prime Minister for his support and hopefully we will be able to announce something in the not-so-distant future. We don't want to jump the gun on an announcement but I think it is quite likely that there will be a significant investment in our relationship with India," Musk said, calling his meeting with PM Modi 'excellent'.

The world's richest man said he is incredibly excited about the future of India. "I think India has more promise than any large country in the world," he said.

"Prime Minister Narendra Modi really cares about India because he is pushing us to make significant investments in India which is something that we intend to do," the Tesla CEO said.

Musk believes India has a lot of potential for sustainable energy generation through wind and solar primarily. "I think the amount of land area you actually need to generate electricity to power India is very small. It is probably 1-2% of the land area of India. So it's very doable. Then you need to pair that with stationary battery packs and then you need electric vehicles and then you have a sustainable energy future. This is a lower-cost way to go and that may surprise people," Musk explained.