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Former Tesla accounting chief Dave Morton is going to Anaplan

Companies in a digital economy need to make faster decisions: Anaplan CEO
2:56 AM ET Tue, 8 Aug 2017 | 03:31

Tesla announced that chief accounting officer Dave Morton was leaving the company after less than a month on Friday. Now CNBC has learned from several people familiar that Morton is becoming chief financial officer at Anaplan, a business software company that wants to go public.

An e-mail went out on Thursday informing insiders and investors about the hire, and one of the people who read it wondered if Dave Morton was a different person with the same name as the Tesla executive. Morton had only begun work as Tesla's chief accounting officer in August.

Anaplan, valued at $1.4 billion, is backed by investors including Premji Invest, Salesforce Ventures, Shasta Ventures and Baillie Gifford. The company has raised $300 million in venture funding.

Before his stint working for Elon Musk, Morton also served as CFO of Seagate Technology, where he oversaw a restructuring initiative that saved the company half a billion dollars, according to Morton's online resume.

Morton did not reply to requests for comment. CNBC earlier reported that Morton left Tesla because executives there, including CEO and chairman Elon Musk, were not carefully considering or prepared to take his advice.

Anaplan declined to comment.

—
Ari Levy
contributed reporting.

Tesla’s accountant quit after concluding Musk was ignoring go-private advice

Tesla executive Morton left after feeling Musk ignored him
1 Hour Ago | 03:10

Tesla's now former chief accounting officer, Dave Morton, quit the company after concluding CEO Elon Musk wasn't interested in accounting details around a potential take-private transaction, according to people familiar with the matter.

Morton resigned Sept. 4, according to a company filing released on Friday. Morton said in the filing “the level of public attention placed on the company, as well as the pace within the company, have exceeded my expectations.”

Morton joined Tesla on Aug. 6 after Tesla approached him for the chief accounting job. Morton saw an opportunity to work with a visionary such as Musk and make life easier for him by helping with some of the necessary housekeeping, according to people familiar with Morton's thinking.

The day after he started, Musk tweeted he was considering taking the company private with “funding secured.” Morton, who left his role as Seagate's CFO to join Tesla, was not flustered by the tweet and met with Musk to go over various details that would make a take-private difficult. He brought up specific details such as equity change of control provisions and potential step-ups in the value of Tesla's debt associated with a new controlling shareholder.

Musk and other executives didn't seem to care about the various financial obstacles, which concerned Morton, said the people. When Morton offered advice about capitalizing the company through other means rather than going private, he was ignored, said the people.

After two weeks or so at the company, Morton concluded he wasn't being heard or understood. He then started to think about leaving, one of the people said. The Securities and Exchange Commission reportedly served Tesla with a subpoena on Aug. 15 about Musk's intentions. Musk eventually abandoned his plan to go private on Aug. 25 after CNBC reported Morgan Stanley was planning to be retained to seek financing for a transaction, suggesting funding for a deal hadn't been secured.

Morton joined the company as chief accounting officer with the expectation he would eventually take over for Deepak Ahuja as CFO, the person said. Ahuja returned to the CFO position in 2017 after retiring in 2015.

A person familiar with the circumstances around Morton's departure said that he did not bring any of these concerns up to Tesla at any time, including in his exit interview.

“I want to be clear that I believe strongly in Tesla, its mission and its future prospects, and I have no disagreements with Tesla's leadership or its financial reporting,” Morton wrote in his statement today.

Morton is the latest in a wave of execs who have recently left or announced they would leave the company, including engineering leader Doug Field and communications chief Sarah O'Brien. Also on Thursday, Bloomberg reported that HR chief Gaby Toledano, currently on leave, would not be returning to the company.

Tesla declined to comment beyond the official filing. Morton couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

Elon needs a vacation, not a couple of days at Burning Man, says NYT's Jim Stewart
5 Hours Ago | 06:10

Supplier tests compact 100-kwh battery pack in BMW i3

BMW i Vision Dynamics concept, 2017 Frankfurt Motor Show
Using new battery-pack architecture, BMW battery supplier Lion Smart has crammed triple the battery capacity into a BMW i3s.

Lion Smart's 100-kilowatt-hour battery gives the little city car a range of 435 miles on a charge, in the same footprint as the original battery pack.

Lion Smart has developed a modular battery-pack design that makes cooling more efficient and eliminates wiring inside the pack to reduce weight, size, and cost.

2018 BMW i3s

Within the same dimensions, a modular pack can be designed to produce 101 kwh at 400 volts, 98 kwh at 600 volts, or 106 kwh at 800 volts, depending on the sizes of the modules and how they're connected.

Lion Smart calls its modules supercells, which house cylindrical battery cells in a hexagonal arrangement. The company says the supercells can be adapted to any cylindrical cell format, including 18650s (used in Tesla Model Ses and Xes), or the latest 21700 design used in the Tesla Model 3. (Tesla refers to it as the 2170, or 21-70.)

Each cell has its own voltage and temperature sensor connected to and powered by that cell's poles.

A new cooling system uses a phase-changing coolant that converts from a liquid to gas if a cell overheats. That way it focuses cooling power on the individual problematic cell. Individual vents at each cell can bleed off the vapor.

Each cell also has its own fuse so that damaged or overheated cells can be clicked off-line individually without removing a whole module or dramatically reducing the capacity of the whole pack.

READ MORE: BMW reveals its self-driving, electric iNext vision for the future

Don't expect to see a 100-kwh battery pack in an i3 at a BMW dealership near you any time in the foreseeable future.

Lion Smart, though, says it has a contract with a customer to develop one of its modular packs for an upcoming product. The 435-mile range rating of the BMW i3 with the demo pack matches exactly the range BMW has quoted for its upcoming iNext electric sedan (based on its i Vision Dynamics concept car from 2017.) Coincidence? You decide.

GM to expand Chevy Bolt EV sales, bring battery production to US

2018 Chevrolet Bolt EV
As part of a sweeping update on General Motors' electric-car plans, CEO Mary Barra announced the company will expand production and sales of the Chevy Bolt EV.

At the same time, GM is expanding battery production for the Bolt EV from South Korea to a new factory in Michigan.

In a blog post on LinkedIn on Wednesday, Barra laid out the company's progress on its promise to transform itself into an electric carmaker.

READ THIS: GM increases Chevy Bolt EV production to ease supply constraints

The Chevrolet Bolt EV may be more popular with buyers than GM expected. Supplies are concentrated in California, and the car is in short supply in other parts of the U.S. Until recently, Canadians had to wait a year to buy a Bolt EV.

The company announced last spring that it will expand production of the car by 20 percent. Expanding battery production near the Bolt's final assembly plant in Orion Township, Michigan is a significant step in that effort.

At the same time, GM's vice president of global electric vehicle programs, Pam Fletcher, announced that the company will expand Bolt EV sales overseas. Speaking at Citi's Global Technology Conference in New York, Fletcher didn't reveal which new countries the Bolt EV will roll into, but said to expect such an announcement “in the not-so-distant future,” according to Automotive News (subscription required.)

2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV

GM currently sells the Bolt EV in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, South Korea, and the United Arab Emirates. GM seems no longer to count sales of the Bolt's twin, the Opel/Vauxhaul Ampera-E, since it sold its European divisions to the French PSA group last year.

In addition to expanding battery production at a new factory in Hazel Park, Michigan, owned by battery supplier LG, Barra announced a $28 million expansion of the battery lab at its Technical Center in Warren, Michigan, that will bring all the company's battery testing under one roof.

Barra also laid out plans to develop an “ultra-fast” charging system for future electric cars.

“Creating a world of zero crashes, zero emissions and zero congestion won’t happen overnight, of course. But our journey to this future is underway,” Barra said.

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ShipBob Raises $40M in Series C Funding

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