TTAC News Round-Up: Bob Lutz Says Tesla's Most Successful Product is Kool-Aid

Matt Posky
by Matt Posky

Bob Lutz has worked as an executive for General Motors, Chrysler, Ford, and BMW at various points in his storied life. Saying he’s a man who is well-versed in the automotive industry would be a colossal understatement. And that expertise has led him to the assertion that a certain manufacturer is a cult led by a false god.

That, Audi has abandoned its wildly successful career in endurance racing for something far less popular, Ford takes a financial body blow, and Volkswagen Group continues to suffer with Porsche as its sugar daddy… after the break!

Former GM executive is no fan of Tesla or Elon Musk

Bob Lutz doesn’t have a whole lot of faith in Tesla. The former General Motors vice chair expressed that skepticism in an interview Wednesday, telling CNBC that he thought “Tesla supporters are like members of a religious cult.” He went on to say that Elon Musk is “seen as a new visionary god who promises this phantasmagorical future, a utopia of profitability and volume.”

“I just don’t see anything about Tesla that gives me any confidence that that business can survive,” Lutz said, adding that he expects the company to suffer an eventual financial collapse “unless people keep pouring new money in ad infinitum.”

Tesla reported a worse than anticipated loss in the second quarter and revenue that fell short of estimates. The company has also spent a massive amount of money on its Gigafactory in Nevada and production improvements at its Fremont, California assembly plant. But it surprised everyone with a reported $22 million net profit for this third quarter — its first profit in more than three years.

Tesla also earned 71 cents a share on an adjusted basis in the third quarter on $2.3 billion in revenue. Analysts expected a loss of 54 cents per share on $1.98 billion in revenues. However, a significant amount of Tesla’s third quarter revenue came from pollution credits it sold to other automakers.

Audi leaves endurance racing for electric series

With the exception of Porsche, Audi has taken away more wins from 24 Hours of Le Mans than any other team. When the new millennium dawned, Audi began its domination of the race and ensured itself a prominent role in FIA World Endurance Championships. Their new role in that race will be a purely historical one, however, as Audi has announced it will be leaving Endurance racing for Formula E.

Motorsport.com reports:

In a statement released on Wednesday, Audi said it will shift its primary motorsport focus to the Formula E championship – where it is partner to the Abt Schaeffler team – while maintaining its DTM programme. A decision on its World Rallycross programme has yet to be made, with Audi suggesting it could provide works backing to the EKS team run by its long-time DTM driver Mattias Ekstrom. Audi’s Chairman of the Board of Management Rupert Stadler said: “We’re going to contest the race for the future on electric power. As our production cars are becoming increasingly electric, our motorsport cars, as Audi’s technological spearheads, have to even more so.”

Volkswagen Group is still reeling from the shame and multi-billion dollar expense of their diesel emissions cheating scandal. As a result, the parent company has shifted Audi’s focus toward “clean” hybrids and electrics. Audi’s diesel-powered R18 e-tron quattro may have been a great race car, but it doesn’t fit the image VW wants Audi to present anymore. Who would have guessed that winning races would create an image problem for an automotive brand?

Ford Q3 profit drops 56 percent

Automotive News reports that the Ford Motor Company’s third-quarter income dropped from its stronger performance a year ago as global revenues dipped slightly.

Net income was $957 million. Ford’s pretax profit was $1.41 billion, down 55 percent from the third quarter of 2015. Revenues were $35.9 billion, down $2.2 billion from a year earlier.

Ford CEO Mark Fields said that “we remain on track to deliver one of our best profit years ever.” Ford is sticking with its guidance that its full year pretax profit will around $10.2 billion, which it decreased to account for charges in its ongoing door-latch recall of

Automotive News said:

In September, Ford said it will recall 1.5 million more vehicles for faulty door latches after federal regulators told the automaker that a regional recall in the previous month was insufficient.

Ford said the recall would cost about $640 million and reduce its projected third-quarter adjusted pretax profit by nearly 40 percent.

Down but far from out: VW profits continue to tumble

Volkswagen AG reported a 56 percent drop in second-quarter profit, hit hard by costs stemming from its emissions-cheating scandal. Third-quarter profits were more of the same.

Automotive News Europe reports:

Volkswagen Group said third-quarter operating profit at its core VW brand plunged more than half, adding weight to management calls for cutbacks at the the automaker’s biggest division.

Operating profit at the VW brand dropped to 363 million euros ($396 million) from 801 million a year earlier, VW said today, or just 1.5 percent of sales.

Skoda, Spain’s SEAT, Porsche, and the company’s truck division softened the blow by driving Volkswagen’s automotive operating profit higher. This compensated declining earnings at Audi, the Volkswagen passenger car brand, and Bentley.

CEO Matthias Mueller said in a statement that VW Group remains “fully operational in spite of the present pressures.”

[Images: General Motors; OnInnovation/Flickr ( CC BY-SA 2.0); Audi; Ford Motor Company; Volkswagen]

Matt Posky
Matt Posky

A staunch consumer advocate tracking industry trends and regulation. Before joining TTAC, Matt spent a decade working for marketing and research firms based in NYC. Clients included several of the world’s largest automakers, global tire brands, and aftermarket part suppliers. Dissatisfied with the corporate world and resentful of having to wear suits everyday, he pivoted to writing about cars. Since then, that man has become an ardent supporter of the right-to-repair movement, been interviewed on the auto industry by national radio broadcasts, driven more rental cars than anyone ever should, participated in amateur rallying events, and received the requisite minimum training as sanctioned by the SCCA. Handy with a wrench, Matt grew up surrounded by Detroit auto workers and managed to get a pizza delivery job before he was legally eligible. He later found himself driving box trucks through Manhattan, guaranteeing future sympathy for actual truckers. He continues to conduct research pertaining to the automotive sector as an independent contractor and has since moved back to his native Michigan, closer to where the cars are born. A contrarian, Matt claims to prefer understeer — stating that front and all-wheel drive vehicles cater best to his driving style.

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  • Big Al from Oz Big Al from Oz on Oct 27, 2016

    If one sits back and look at what is occurring outside of Tesla by "recognised" manufactures, Tesla doesn't look that innovative. In the EV market Tesla will not hold up as it is. The Gigafactory will become a loss maker for the reasons I've pointed out in the past, ie, reliance on secondary and tertiary "taillings/by products" of mining. Tesla has been compared to the new Apple often, this is a mistake. Tesla is no "Apple". Its niche and will always be so, the large manufacturers will have no other way.

  • Brett Woods Brett Woods on Oct 28, 2016

    Ashes to ashes, dust to dust Bob. Follow, or get out of the way. As with Audi's P1 LeMans cars - they won and won. Time to move on. There is opportunity in Formula-E and it's the future. The drivers love it and they are all the greats and the families of the greats. There is a sense of 'anything can happen' in that series. I'm just getting into it.

  • Theflyersfan OK, I'm going to stretch the words "positive change" to the breaking point here, but there might be some positive change going on with the beaver grille here. This picture was at Car and Driver. You'll notice that the grille now dives into a larger lower air intake instead of really standing out in a sea of plastic. In darker colors like this blue, it somewhat conceals the absolute obscene amount of real estate this unneeded monstrosity of a failed styling attempt takes up. The Euro front plate might be hiding some sins as well. You be the judge.
  • Theflyersfan I know given the body style they'll sell dozens, but for those of us who grew up wanting a nice Prelude Si with 4WS but our student budgets said no way, it'd be interesting to see if Honda can persuade GenX-ers to open their wallets for one. Civic Type-R powertrain in a coupe body style? Mild hybrid if they have to? The holy grail will still be if Honda gives the ultimate middle finger towards all things EV and hybrid, hides a few engineers in the basement away from spy cameras and leaks, comes up with a limited run of 9,000 rpm engines and gives us the last gasp of the S2000 once again. A send off to remind us of when once they screamed before everything sounds like a whirring appliance.
  • Jeff Nice concept car. One can only dream.
  • Funky D The problem is not exclusively the cost of the vehicle. The problem is that there are too few use cases for BEVs that couldn't be done by a plug-in hybrid, with the latter having the ability to do long-range trips without requiring lengthy recharging and being better able to function in really cold climates.In our particular case, a plug-in hybrid would run in all electric mode for the vast majority of the miles we would drive on a regular basis. It would also charge faster and the battery replacement should be less expensive than its BEV counterpart.So the answer for me is a polite, but firm NO.
  • 3SpeedAutomatic 2012 Ford Escape V6 FWD at 147k miles:Just went thru a heavy maintenance cycle: full brake job with rotors and drums, replace top & bottom radiator hoses, radiator flush, transmission flush, replace valve cover gaskets (still leaks oil, but not as bad as before), & fan belt. Also, #4 fuel injector locked up. About $4.5k spread over 19 months. Sole means of transportation, so don't mind spending the money for reliability. Was going to replace prior to the above maintenance cycle, but COVID screwed up the market ( $4k markup over sticker including $400 for nitrogen in the tires), so bit the bullet. Now serious about replacing, but waiting for used and/or new car prices to fall a bit more. Have my eye on a particular SUV. Last I checked, had a $2.5k discount with great interest rate (better than my CU) for financing. Will keep on driving Escape as long as A/C works. 🚗🚗🚗
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