High-Profile Exit at Tesla as Cybertruck Leader Siddhant Awasthi Departs
Amid the palpable optimism around the Tesla (TSLA) cult among its followers about charismatic CEO Elon Musk’s now-approved $1 trillion pay package, news of another high-profile exit has hit the world’s most valuable car company. Siddhant Awasthi, the young Indian engineer who led Tesla’s Cybertruck division and, more recently, the EV maker’s Model 3 program, called it quits in a LinkedIn post. Awasthi joined the company as an intern eight years ago, while rising through the ranks to oversee the engineering, production ramp-up, product strategy, quality improvement, and supply chain logistics for the Cybertruck division.
Further, in July 2025, Awasthi assumed charge of the Model 3 program in addition to his role on the Cybertruck.
Not without issues, the Cybertruck has largely been a negative for Tesla. Facing issues of various recalls, missing delivery targets, and lagging sales expectations, it can be safely said that Awasthi’s stint at Cybertruck was one of missed opportunities.
Awasthi’s exit follows several departures from Tesla’s management in recent years as Elon Musk’s temperamental and mercurial way of leading the company turned out not to be an apt fit for many. While in April 2024, Drew Baglino, Senior VP, Powertrain & Energy Engineering, resigned, the Head of Battery Technology, Vineet Mehta, left after 18 years in June 2025. In the same month, Musk’s ambitious humanoid robot initiative received a jolt when Milan Kovac, VP, Optimus robotics program, departed the company. Further, in August 2025, Tesla abandoned its Dojo Supercomputer division, with its head, Peter Banon, leaving the company.
Dwindling profits, revenues, slowing deliveries, and production, political skirmishes—whatever has been thrown against Tesla, however, has not dimmed the optimism of shareholders about the company. The reason: Elon Musk.
With his renewed focus on leading the company to new heights after his political escapades, the South Africa-born Musk retains the faith of Tesla shareholders. A glowing endorsement of which was seen recently when his scarcely believable $1 trillion pay package was approved with a whopping 75% majority as the stock recovered from its mid-year slump to be up 8% on a year-to-date (YTD) basis.
The package comes with a set of milestones that Musk must hit over the next decade to pocket this package. This includes increasing the company’s market cap to $8.5 trillion, delivering 20 million EVs, 10 million active subscriptions for its full self-driving unit, and deliveries of one million robotaxis and Optimus robots.
If these milestones are met, Tesla shareholders will be richly rewarded. And the shareholders considered Musk’s previous track record to repose faith in the man again.
From a mere $1.6 billion market cap when it IPO-ed in June 2010, under Musk’s helm, Tesla now commands a gargantuan market cap of about $1.43 trillion. From making Tesla the first automaker to offer a consumer-available “Full Self-Driving”-branded system to leading SpaceX to become the first private company to launch a privately developed liquid-fueled rocket in space to aiming to build humanoid robots that will at the worst replace and at the best assist the human labor force in the future, Musk’s companies have done it all, albeit with varying degrees of success and not according to the original timelines.
However, what remains beyond doubt is that with Musk at the helm, Tesla’s shareholders have made enormous wealth so far, and they are betting on him to deliver again over the next decade.
But all of that is in the future, and the reality now is that Tesla is facing declining revenues, earnings, and intense competition from China.
Over the past two years, Tesla’s quarterly earnings have surpassed expectations on just a couple of occasions, even though the past five years have seen the company reporting revenue and earnings CAGRs of 27.69% and 49.09%, respectively.
The most recent quarter was a mixed bag, with revenue exceeding Street estimates but earnings missing the same, as the company reported a third consecutive quarter of yearly earnings drop.
Total revenues for Q3 2025 came in at $28.1 billion, up 12% from the previous year. While the energy and service segments witnessed sharp yearly growth rates of 44% and 25% to $3.4 billion and $3.5 billion, respectively, the core automotive segment only saw a year-over-year (YoY) growth of 6% to $21.2 billion, despite the push that was there due to the ending of the $7,500 EV tax credit.
The EPS slid by 31% in the same period to $0.50, coming in lower than the consensus estimate of $0.56 per share.
Net cash from operating activities remained almost unchanged from the previous year at $6.2 billion as the company closed the quarter with a cash balance of $41.6 billion. This was much ahead of its short-term debt levels of $1.9 billion.
Total deliveries in Q3 stood at 497,099 vehicles, an uptick of just 7% from the previous year. In fact, production was down by 5% yearly to 447,450 vehicles.
Considering its current situation, analysts have deemed the TSLA stock a “Hold,” with a mean target price that has already been surpassed. The high target price of $600 denotes an upside potential of about 35% from current levels. Out of 42 analysts covering the stock, 14 have a “Strong Buy” rating, two have a “Moderate Buy” rating, 17 have a “Hold” rating, and nine have a “Strong Sell” rating.
