Tesla CIO Quits To Work On Stealth Startup
CIO Jeff Vijayan has left Tesla to work on WRAP to help the automaker deliver a huge number of electric cars.
Jay Vijayan has stopped working as Tesla’s Chief Information Officer to start working on a stealth startup. The automaker has confirmed the departure of Mr. Jay, but it won’t state whether it has found an executive to permanently replace him up till now. Mr. Jay spoke to CIO Journal that he loved to work with the organization but he was interested in starting his own company for a time.
Jay appreciated Elon Musk by saying that he supported his decision to establish a company. Currently, Jay has hidden the details of his new company. In January, he formally left Tesla and started working in his new role as CEO and founder around a month ago. Fred Lamber previously reported the measure at Electrek.
Jay said a highlight of his four-year tenure at Tesla, was in helping to establish WARP, a combination of back-end management software, which is custom-built to provide support to the approach of the automaker to servicing and selling vehicles.
The company uses its Warp-powered online trading site and its own vehicle showrooms instead of dealers to deliver vehicles. Wrap manages all the back office functions for the automobile manufacturer such as financial accounting, lead management, management of supply chain, and manufacturing workflow management.
The direct selling approach of the carmaker indicates that the company – not dealerships – also manages customer service matters. Customers can call for fixes and services – which are many times software-based – owing to the way Tesla designs cars.
When engineers fix, the fixes can be sent as over-the-air updates. Analysts say the biggest risk to the organization developing its own back-end software is that it might not grow as the organizations.
On April 4, 2016, Jay spoke to CIO Journal he was he was “proud” of how well the scaling of the software was done. Wrap might face new scale tests if the 276,000 reservations for the EV Tesla Model 3 booked in the past week turn into sales.
Tesla used Wrap when it started to reserve on March 31, for the compact car, which is scheduled to be launched in late 2017. Jay and his team of around 25 software developers developed the earlier version of the tech system in only 4 months; he addressed a conference two years ago.
Earlier, Jay said he was “skeptical” about developing the software but, ultimately, Elon was correct. The new technology provided the company with the agility and pace required, he told.
By helping the carmaker sell thousands of electric vehicles at an affordable price, Wrap would improve the sales revenues of the company and cut down the oil price as affordable EV can attract gasoline fuelled car users towards EVs because of which the demand for oil might decline.
Washington Post claimed that such a large number of EV sales would decarbonize the transportation industry and bring down the emission levels rapidly, so one could also say that Wrap would also prove to be environment friendly.
