Chief Designer, Tesla — Jay Leno's Garage

Franz von Holzhausen's Apple Watch: The Man Who Designed Electric Cars Wears the Watch That Thinks the Same Way

The Model S. The Model 3. The Model Y. The Cybertruck. Every Tesla that has redefined what an electric vehicle can look like was shaped by one man's eye. Franz von Holzhausen, Tesla's Chief Designer since 2008, appeared on Jay Leno's Garage discussing design modifications for the 2026 Tesla Model S — and on his wrist, an Apple Watch. For a designer whose entire philosophy is built on eliminating unnecessary detail and letting function drive form, it is perhaps the most fitting wristwatch in the world.

Franz von Holzhausen — Tesla Chief Designer — Apple Watch on wrist. Source: Jay Leno's Garage

Discussing 2026 Tesla Model S design modifications with Jay Leno

Franz von Holzhausen was born in Simsbury, Connecticut, in 1968, into a family where design was already part of the air — his father was a designer. He studied at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, graduating in 1992 with a degree in Transportation Design, and went directly to Volkswagen, where his first significant project was a concept called the Concept One. That concept became the Volkswagen New Beetle — one of the most culturally resonant automotive designs of the 1990s, a car that made people feel something. It was an early indication of what von Holzhausen's career would consistently produce: vehicles that communicate an idea, not just a shape.

He moved to General Motors in 2000, where as design manager he was responsible for the Pontiac Solstice and the Saturn Sky — two genuinely beautiful American sports cars that won Automobile Magazine's Design of the Year Award and demonstrated an ability to create emotional, desirable objects within the constraints of a major legacy manufacturer. In 2005 he joined Mazda as Director of Design for North America, where he developed the Nagare design language — a fluid, motion-inspired aesthetic that became the visual foundation for an entire generation of Mazda vehicles — and the Furai concept, considered by many to be one of the most striking automotive concept cars of the 2000s.

Then, in 2008, he made what many at the time considered a reckless career decision. He left Mazda — a stable position at a respected global brand — to join a small electric vehicle startup in California that had so far produced only a low-volume sports car based on a Lotus chassis, had no dedicated design studio, and was operating on an uncertain financial footing. The company was Tesla. Elon Musk had personally recruited him with a brief that was either thrilling or terrifying depending on your appetite for risk: build an entire world-class design studio from scratch, with no legacy constraints, and prove that electric vehicles could be the most desirable cars on the road. Von Holzhausen took the job.

What followed is automotive design history. The Model S, introduced in 2012, was the car that made the world take electric vehicles seriously — not as compromises or novelties, but as objects of genuine desire. Its clean, elongated silhouette, minimal shutlines, retractable door handles, and interior centred around a single large touchscreen removed every visual cue that said "this is different" and replaced them with cues that said "this is better." The Model 3 and Model Y democratised that aesthetic across the mass market. The Cybertruck abandoned every convention of pickup truck design in favour of a first-principles approach dictated by stainless steel's inability to be stamped — and produced a vehicle so visually alien that it became instantly iconic. Von Holzhausen also oversees Tesla's Supercharger network design, the Powerwall, and solar products. He has been named one of the top 25 automotive designers of all time by Automobile Magazine and is listed among Motor Trend's 50 most influential automotive executives.

"Tesla is about stunning design combined with breakthrough technology. We're going to turn the world on its ear and create high demand through design." — Franz von Holzhausen, on joining Tesla, 2008

The Same Design Philosophy on the Wrist

When von Holzhausen joined Tesla and designed the Model S interior, the most radical decision was not the battery, the performance, or the range — it was removing the instrument cluster and replacing it with a single large touchscreen. Every physical button that could be replaced by software was replaced. Every dial that was there because cars had always had dials was questioned. What remained was a surface of almost shocking simplicity — and it communicated that the team had thought carefully about what actually needed to be there.

The Apple Watch follows exactly the same logic. Its face presents only what the wearer has chosen to place there. It contains no mechanical movement, no exposed complications, no design language borrowed from a watchmaking tradition it was never part of. It is a screen on an aluminium or titanium case, updating itself continuously, learning from the wearer's patterns, improving via software. A designer who spent his career asking "does this detail earn its place?" and removing the ones that didn't is precisely the right person to be wearing it.

Two Technologies, One Philosophy

There is a particular coherence to spotting Franz von Holzhausen on Jay Leno's Garage. Leno, as established in this very episode, wears a platinum A. Lange & Söhne Datograph Perpetual Calendar — one of the most mechanically complex and beautifully finished watches in the world, assembled twice by hand in the Glashütte tradition. Von Holzhausen wears an Apple Watch. Both choices are perfectly consistent with who each man is and how each man thinks about technology. Leno's watch is a celebration of accumulated mechanical knowledge and the human hands that apply it. Von Holzhausen's is a celebration of what happens when you throw away the accumulated assumptions and start from what the thing actually needs to do. Both approaches have produced objects worth noticing. At Spot.Watch, we notice both.

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And at Spot.Watch — that's always worth noticing.