Musk Wants To Help Boeing. All Quiet At Boeing
Elon Musk offered Boeing Tesla’s help with its troubled Boeing 787 battery packs. He wants Boeing try the packs Tesla uses in its SpaceX rockets and Tesla cars. Ever the hipster, Musk announced the unsolicited aid via Twitter:
“Desire to help Boeing is real & am corresponding w 787 chief engineer,” tweeted Musk. This revelation had been preceded by this short message:
Real car executives cringe over this. They have learned the hard way to avoid talking about burning cars or, God forbid, burning planes if they can help it. They also learned not to chum up with someone in trouble. The right thing to do is stay quiet until it is over, and to be happy that it isn’t you. Boeing wisely did not comment.
Already, Musk was found with his foot in the mouth. In an interview with Esquire last year, Musk said: “You know the joke about Boeing: It puts the zero in being.” Now Musk says the magazine made it up.
Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.
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Boeing rushed the 787 and outsourced so many normally in-house produced components that putting it all together on a tight timeline was a bear for assemblers. One airline that had an incident found improperly routed wiring when they inspected their plane. The problems with that aircraft may extend far beyond the batteries or charge management into engineering, testing, and ultimately, Boeing management. Would there be such problems were Mulally still at Boeing instead of Ford? Why did he bail on Boeing in the first place?
I don't really get all the hate here for this guy. He obviously has a lot of ego, but I wouldn't expect otherwise from somebody who's willing to take on very large, entrenched businesses. From the interviews I've seen he seems pretty grounded and respectful. The way people talk about him here, you'd think he was a cross between Miguel Ferrer in Robocop and Steve Martin in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.