This Tesla safety engineer just left after over 14 years

A key Tesla safety engineer has departed from the company, as shared earlier this month, following nearly a decade and a half spent working across three of the automaker’s locations.

In a post on LinkedIn last week, Tesla’s Principal CAE Crash Safety Engineer, Petter Winberg, announced his departure from the company after working there for over 14 years. Winberg played a major role in Tesla’s efforts to make its vehicles some of the safest out there, starting as a Senior Tech Specialist in 2011 and slowly getting promoted to his current position.

In his position, Winberg worked on crash architectures for the Cybercab, Semi, and future vehicles, along with the Model S, Model X, Model 3, and Model Y, and developing specific accident architectures once Giga Casting production came into play. The executive’s full departure announcement reads as follows:

Elon, 2011: “I want Tesla vehicles to be the safest on the planet” Me: “Challenge accepted”

Having developed Model S, S-DM, X, 3, Y, Y-SP as well as future crash architectures, I have decided now is the time to move on. Thank you Tesla, keep crushing it! What an incredible team, I will miss you all.

READ MORE ON TESLA SAFETY: Tesla executive responds to claims of high fatal accident rate

During his time at Tesla, the engineer worked at the company’s engineering headquarters in Palo Alto, California, before moving to the company’s nearby Fremont factory, then finally landing at the automaker’s Gothenburg, Sweden facilities, where he has served in his current position since January 2020. Prior to this, Winberg also worked at Volvo, Saab, Ford, and Volvo.

The post also elicited a handful of comments from colleagues, including one commenter who called Winberg the “master of crash simulations,” and multiple others who praised him for his guidance and knowledge of the subject.

Tesla has also been heavily focused on making its vehicles safe since the early days, as Winberg points out.

As one example in October, Tesla VP of Vehicle Engineering Lars Moravy reiterated this point by highlighting both the company’s active and passive safety features included in the Model Y and other vehicles. Moravy detailed that, while features built-in for the Autopilot and Supervised Full Self-Driving (FSD) systems provide active safety features meant to help prevent crashes, even if “the worst occurs, [Tesla drivers] will be protected by the best passive safety cars on the planet.”

The company’s vehicles have also earned top safety ratings across four different continents at this point, most recently including a five-star safety rating for the Cybertruck from the top auto regulator in the U.S.

Over the last several months, Tesla has also faced executive and high-profile engineering departures a handful of times, as can probably be expected from most companies of its size.

Some examples include the departure of Safety Policy Lead Marc Van Impe and Chief Information Officer Nagesh Saldi in October, VP of Finance and Business Operations Sreela Venkataratnam in August, and both SVP of Powertrain and Energy Engineering Drew Baglino and VP of Public Policy and Business Development Rohan Patel in April, to name just a few.

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Source: https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-safety-engineer-left-14-years/