AP
Peter Rive, left, with cousin and SolarCity chair Elon Musk and CEO and brother Lyndon Rive
Peter Rive, cofounder of SolarCity and cousin of Elon Musk, is leaving Tesla months after the electric-car company's multibillion acquisition of the renewable-energy business.Rive, who served as vice president of solar products at Tesla, follows his brother, Lyndon, out the door at the company. Lyndon announced he was resigning in May to start a new venture.
Tesla confirmed Peter Rive's departure in an emailed statement to Business Insider Tuesday evening:
"As co-founder and CTO of SolarCity, Pete has played an instrumental role in expanding access to solar to hundreds of thousands of people across the country," a Tesla spokesperson said.
"Pete's responsibilities, including work on Solar Roof, will be distributed among Tesla's existing engineering teams. We want to thank Pete for everything he's done for SolarCity and Tesla."
The Rive departures, happening in close succession, have raised concerns within the industry after critics previously questioned Tesla's motivation for the $2.6 billion SolarCity acquisition - a move that was seen as a bailout of that company. The Rive brothers founded SolarCity in 2006 with the help of a $10 million investment from Musk.
SolarCity expanded quickly in the decade that followed with zero-down payment financing incentives and a growing sales and installation arm. After initially setting out to grow its customer base to 1 million by 2018, SolarCity in 2015 scaled back significantly, due to costs and lower-than-expected demand.
SolarCity grew to about 300,000 customers late last year, Reuters reported.
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