Tesla's North American director of service leaves EV maker

(Reuters) -Piero Landolfi, Tesla's director of service for the North American market has left the EV maker after nearly nine years, joining an exodus of executives from the company grappling with a drop in sales.

Leaving Tesla was hard due to "the first principle thinking and the getting stuff done mentality" at the company, Landolfi said in a LinkedIn post on Sunday.

Landolfi has now joined AI robotics and autonomous e-commerce technology company Nimble as its senior vice president of operations, per his LinkedIn profile.

His move is the latest of a string of departures from the electric carmaker, joining Troy Jones, Tesla's top sales executive in North America, who left in July after 15 years with the company.

Raj Jegannathan, a senior executive with a wide purview including several IT and data functions, recently took over the sales role, Reuters reported exclusively last month.

Other key figures who left include Omead Afshar, Tesla CEO Elon Musk's confidant, who was in charge of sales and manufacturing operations in North America and Europe.

Milan Kovac, the head of Tesla's Optimus humanoid robot team, announced he was leaving in June. Other recent departures include top battery executive Vineet Mehta and software chief David Lau.

Musk's EV maker posted the worst quarterly sales decline in more than a decade and profit that missed Wall Street targets in July; its profit margin on making cars, however, was better than many feared.

Musk had said that U.S. government cuts in support for EV makers could lead to a "few rough quarters" for Tesla, before a wave of revenue from self-driving software and services begins late next year.

(Reporting by Juby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Alan Barona)