Tesla's Cybercab assembly chief leaves for Rivian, weeks after the robotaxi's launch

Tesla has lost the manager who ran final assembly of its Cybercab robotaxi at Giga Texas. Jody Kerns, Tesla's senior manager of Cybercab general assembly, announced this week on LinkedIn that he is moving to Rivian, where he will be Director of General Assembly for the R2 SUV at the company's factory in Normal, Illinois.

The move comes only weeks after the Cybercab started carrying paying passengers in Austin, and it makes Kerns the second senior figure from the Cybercab launch team to leave Tesla in 2026.

Who is Jody Kerns?

Kerns joined Tesla in January 2024 as an end-of-line manager. In February 2026, the month the first Cybercab without a steering wheel rolled off the line in Austin, he took charge of the vehicle's general assembly, the final stage where the car is put together. He led that line through the ramp-up to commercial service.

Before Tesla, he spent about 14 years at Volkswagen of America, ending as Director of Assembly from 2021 to 2024. According to Electrek, he managed around 1,200 people there and integrated the electric ID.4 into the Chattanooga plant alongside two other models. Earlier in his career he worked for four years in Toyota's paint shops.

In his farewell post, Kerns thanked his Tesla team for the work "from the WEOL project to the launch of the Cyber Cab". About his new job, he said he wants to help make the R2 the best electric SUV on the market.

The second Cybercab launch leader to go

Kerns is not the first. Michael So, who led new product introduction for the Cybercab from September 2024 to April 2026, left in May to become vice president of product engineering at Aalo Atomics, a nuclear reactor startup in Austin. So had been the first employee at Giga Texas in 2021 and helped launch the Model Y and Cybertruck there. Under Kerns' announcement, he wrote that he "wouldn't want to launch Cybercab with anyone else".

Departures of experienced managers are normal in any large company, and Tesla has a deep bench of manufacturing engineers. Still, losing two people who were central to setting up a brand-new production process in the same year is worth noting, especially at a time when Tesla wants to build Cybercabs in much larger numbers.

Where the Cybercab stands

Commercial Cybercab rides started in Austin on September 3, 2026. About a week later, the US safety regulator NHTSA sent Tesla a special order asking it to show under oath that a car without a steering wheel or brake pedal meets federal safety standards. NHTSA estimates Tesla's 2026 robotaxi fleet, Model Y and Cybercab combined, at about 1,000 vehicles.

The Cybercab is built with Tesla's new "unboxed" process, in which large sections of the car are assembled separately and joined late in the process. Getting such a line to high volume is exactly the kind of job Kerns was doing.

Why Rivian wants him

For Rivian, the hire is about the R2, its smaller and cheaper SUV. Deliveries started on June 9 from the Normal plant. According to Drive Tesla Canada, Rivian delivered a record 19,248 vehicles in the third quarter and is targeting 65,000 to 70,000 deliveries in 2026, including 20,000 to 25,000 R2s. The company recently added a second shift in Normal, plans a third in 2027 and wants the expanded plant to reach a capacity of 215,000 vehicles a year, up to 155,000 of them R2s.

Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe has said supplier readiness, not factory space, is the biggest obstacle to higher output. An assembly leader with experience at Toyota, Volkswagen and Tesla fits that challenge well.

What to watch next

• Cybercab volumes: whether Tesla keeps scaling its Austin fleet and expands the Cybercab to more cities.
• NHTSA: Tesla's formal answers to the regulator's questions about how the Cybercab meets safety rules.
• More departures: whether other members of the Cybercab launch team follow, or Tesla names a successor for Kerns.
• R2 ramp: how quickly Rivian can push R2 output up with its new assembly chief.