Musk Blames NY Times For $100 Million Loss, Should Blame Himself
Tesla CEO Elon Musk found the perfect scapegoat for lost Tesla sales and a 13 percent drop of the company’s stock: John Broder of the New York Times. Musk told Reuters that “Tesla has lost about $100 million in sales and canceled orders due to the Times story, which said the sedan ran out of battery power sooner than promised during a chilly winter test drive from Washington D.C. to Boston.” Musk should look in the mirror if he needs a scape goat.
To pile on more, Musk told the wire that “between $100 million and $200 million of Tesla’s drop in market value was due to the Times article.” Since the Times’ February 8 story, Tesla shares have fallen 13 percent.
“We have seen a few hundred cancellations that are due to the NYT piece and slightly lowered demand in the U.S. Northeast region,” Musk emailed Reuters.
Reuters carefully raises the possibility that either Musk’s math is wrong, or the losses in sales are steeper. Says the wire: “To lose $100 million in car sales, assuming a $100,000 price per vehicle, Tesla would have to sell 1,000 fewer cars than expected.”
Musk says that a “Tesla team and I are brainstorming this week how to correct the misperception that they have created in the market about how well our car performs in cold weather. That too, will take money and time.”
TTAC says and said: Musk has nobody else to blame than himself. It was Musk who started the Great Twitter War that still reverberates through the interwebs. The Times story had received zero traction in the media until Musk twittered the lid off it, and it exploded. Musk is a loose cannon, and the easiest way the Tesla team can start changing the perceptions in the market is to take away Musk’s Twitter account. However, it may be too late. The spat between a West Coast tycoon and the New York paper told a much wider public that “maybe, this EV stuff is still not ready for prime time,” as more than one commenter commented.
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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Two things I wanted to say: 1. Saying Musk must know what he's doing in the electric car business just because he's launched rockets into space is really stretching it. The Russians launched sputnik in 1957. That's 56 years of various countries having sucessfull space programs. In that 56 years how many successfull mainstream electric cars have there been ?. Uh huh, that's what I thought. Even the RUSSIANS with their quality of cars can launch something into space. 2. That plaid-on-plaid look he's got going on in that photo has to be the pinnacle of billionaire plaid coolness. That's even more plaid than Herb from WKRP !. The only way plaid could get any cooler is if Jackie Stewart sat in an early Porsche 928 with the Op-Art interior.
Sooo, Really Rich and Uber-Cool Smart Tesla Dude is dressed like a Central Casting version of a used car salesman . . . why? Sure glad he hired someone with a better sense of style to design the car.