Speaker 1: Well, Elon Musk gives now the richest person on the planet.
Speaker 1: More than half the satellites in space are owned and
Speaker 1: controlled by one man starting his own artificial intelligence company. Well,
Speaker 1: he's a legitimate super genius.
Speaker 2: I mean legitimate. He says.
Speaker 3: He's always voted for Democrats, but this year it will
Speaker 3: be different.
Speaker 2: He'll vote Republican.
Speaker 1: There is a reason the US government is so reliant
Speaker 1: on him.
Speaker 2: Elon Musk is a scam artist and he's done nothing.
Speaker 2: Anything he does is fascinating people.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Elon Inc. Where we talk about Elon Musk's
Speaker 1: vast corporate empire, his latest gambits and antics, and try
Speaker 1: to make sense of it all. I'm your host, Max
Speaker 1: Chapkin in for David Poppadopolis. Today we're talking about Tesla.
Speaker 1: The company's fourth quarter sales numbers came out earlier this morning,
Speaker 1: and Elon Musk's car company reported that had delivered nearly
Speaker 1: four hundred and eighty five thousand vehicles between October and December.
Speaker 1: That's basically what Wall Street expected. Meanwhile, something that did
Speaker 1: not meet expectations, Fidelity once again said that x Elon
Speaker 1: Musk's social media company was worthless, not worthless, but worth
Speaker 1: less than it was when Elon bought it. X lost
Speaker 1: nearly eleven percent of its value in November, which sounds
Speaker 1: bad until you realize that was the same month he
Speaker 1: told Bob Eiger, the CEO of one of the world's
Speaker 1: most beloved companies, to go fuck himself, to discuss this
Speaker 1: and to look at what's ahead in the new year.
Speaker 1: We've got our panel here, Sarah Fryar, who leads our
Speaker 1: big tech team here at Bloomberg News. Hello Sarah, Happy New.
Speaker 2: Year, Happy New Year.
Speaker 1: And Dana Hull, the world's most diligent Tesla reporter. Happy
Speaker 1: New Year to you, Dana, twenty twenty four, LFG Okay.
Speaker 1: So Elon Musk has over the last few years, I think,
Speaker 1: Dana correct me if I'm wrong, bragged that he's spent
Speaker 1: the new year delivering cars that he's been, you know,
Speaker 1: in the factory, you know, trying to put the last
Speaker 1: bow on in another year for Tesla. Do we have
Speaker 1: any sense of whether that's what he did over this holiday?
Speaker 3: So it's not that I'm on the phone with Elon,
Speaker 3: but my sense is that he spent part of the
Speaker 3: holidays in Puerto Rico or at least his his jet
Speaker 3: was in Puerto Rico, And yeah, I did not get
Speaker 3: the sense that he was in Fremont or in Austin,
Speaker 3: like helping out the delivery guys, which you know he
Speaker 3: has done in years past. But yeah, no, I mean
Speaker 3: I think I think he was out of town.
Speaker 1: What do you make of the numbers? So four hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty five thousand vehicles for the last three months
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty three, one point eight million cars for
Speaker 1: the year. I mean, it sounds it sounds like a lot.
Speaker 1: I mean in historic terms. On the other hand, you know,
Speaker 1: not as high as some other companies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the big news out of the numbers for
Speaker 3: me was they didn't break out how many cyber trucks
Speaker 3: they delivered, which is pretty funny given that this is
Speaker 3: their brand new vehicle. So they delivered, you know, four hundred,
Speaker 3: five hundred and seven vehicles. They broke out the three
Speaker 3: and the Y, and then they had other models which
Speaker 3: includes the S, the X, and the cyber trucks. So
Speaker 3: we have no idea how many cyber trucks have actually
Speaker 3: been handed over to customers, and it just is weird
Speaker 3: that they didn't break that out.
Speaker 2: So it has to be intentional, right.
Speaker 3: Right, it's a lousy number, so they didn't broadcast it.
Speaker 3: If it was a positive number, they would have absolutely said, oh,
Speaker 3: we you know, we did a thousand or something like that.
Speaker 3: So they're basically obfuscating how many cyber trucks they've actually made.
Speaker 2: And then the big thing.
Speaker 3: Is that they've lost their like EV crown to BYD,
Speaker 3: which is the Warren Buffett backed Chinese company that also
Speaker 3: makes evs, And you know, Musk has said over and
Speaker 3: over again that their biggest competition is in China. But
Speaker 3: this is the first quarter that we've actually seen BYD
Speaker 3: kind of like come ahead now in terms of full
Speaker 3: EV deliveries ahead of Tesla. But the stock reaction today
Speaker 3: is kind of mixed. I think it's like the delivery
Speaker 3: numbers were in line with what Wall Street was expecting,
Speaker 3: but nothing earth shattering.
Speaker 1: So, Sarah, I mean you sort of hinted at this.
Speaker 1: On December twenty ninth, Musk wrote, I stand by my
Speaker 1: prediction that if Tesla executes extremely well over the next
Speaker 1: five years, that the long term value could exceed Apple
Speaker 1: and a Ramco combine. That I mean is that the
Speaker 1: spin that we're going to see like this is just
Speaker 1: you know what, strength on strength. He's just gonna play
Speaker 1: this as a as a huge victory.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that the game of talking about
Speaker 2: these things is to surprise and delight, right, So you
Speaker 2: want to start with like, you know, this grand vision,
Speaker 2: and I think that's the thing that Musk always excels at.
Speaker 2: He makes people believe that the future is going to
Speaker 2: be like way crazier and unimaginably amazing compared to today. And
Speaker 2: then you know, the details are kind of like they
Speaker 2: should probably exceed expectations, but in the case of Tesla,
Speaker 2: they haven't always except for you know, when it comes
Speaker 2: to the actual uptake of evs or EV's, I think
Speaker 2: for Tesla have a little bit of a better chance
Speaker 2: because the charging network for everyone else is kind of crumbling,
Speaker 2: So you know, that's one way you might bet on them.
Speaker 2: But I think when it comes to talking about the numbers,
Speaker 2: the best case scenario is to just say the future
Speaker 2: is going to be so much better than you can
Speaker 2: even imagine and not focus on what's right now.
Speaker 1: And I guess that's what he's saying. Dan, you brought
Speaker 1: up byd refresh our memories, Like what is BYD and
Speaker 1: to what extent is it fair to compare them to Tesla?
Speaker 1: How similar or different are they from Tesla?
Speaker 3: I mean it's a Chinese electric car company and a
Speaker 3: battery company. And I think that like what most people
Speaker 3: are realizing is that when you look at the EV market,
Speaker 3: there's kind of two clear leaders BYD and Tesla, which
Speaker 3: are vertically integrated companies that make the cars, basically make
Speaker 3: the batteries, know a lot about like powertrain and engineering
Speaker 3: and battery sale development. And then there's like everybody else,
Speaker 3: which is the legacy OEMs that are trying to pivot
Speaker 3: to evs but don't have that kind of in house expertise.
Speaker 3: And so, like one of the big narratives in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty three was like slowing EV growth that like the
Speaker 3: EV market is still growing, but it's like slower than usual,
Speaker 3: and you saw like Ford and GM and all these
Speaker 3: other players kind of like pull back on their expectations.
Speaker 3: But like BYD and and Tesla are totally leading the
Speaker 3: world in volume, and Tesla deliveries year over year it
Speaker 3: was thirty eight percent growth. I mean that's that's still
Speaker 3: like significant growth. I mean, Tesla's growth is not like
Speaker 3: the runaway fifty percent growth that they have had some years,
Speaker 3: but it's still it's still growing. And yeah, I mean
Speaker 3: I think BYD does not really sell cars in the
Speaker 3: United States. So that's why, like a lot of people
Speaker 3: like are like what the hell is BYD because you
Speaker 3: don't see like a BYD car on the freeway.
Speaker 2: But they are a massive player.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and China is a massive market, a massive market
Speaker 1: that of course Tesla has wanted to participate in. I mean,
Speaker 1: does this, I mean, does this bode ill at least
Speaker 1: for Tesla's sort of like big hope for growth in China.
Speaker 3: I think it's going to be very interesting to see
Speaker 3: in the coming year how Tesla reacts to be widdy
Speaker 3: in China. They've done a lot to kind of cut
Speaker 3: prices in China. They do a lot of marketing in China.
Speaker 3: You know, Tesla owes a lot to China. I mean,
Speaker 3: the Chinese government really supported the building of that factory
Speaker 3: in Shanghai. And after the United States, China is far
Speaker 3: and away Tesla's largest market. So I think just like
Speaker 3: keeping an eye on price cuts and in the ways
Speaker 3: that Tesla tries to pull demand levers in China's going
Speaker 3: to be really interesting.
Speaker 1: Sarah, do you think that Elon Musk's sort of seeding
Speaker 1: the crown, the electric vehicle crown to another company is significant?
Speaker 1: I mean, how much of his mythology is kind of
Speaker 1: baked into like being the market leader. Do you think this,
Speaker 1: you know, ultimately becomes no big deal.
Speaker 2: I think if if I'm Elon Musk, I'm taking credit
Speaker 2: for it, right, it's like a victory because he started
Speaker 2: the evy revolution of the modern era, and so other
Speaker 2: companies succeeding in it. It's like a reflection of his
Speaker 2: own influence on the market, or at least that's how
Speaker 2: I'd see if I were being optimistic. But I think that,
Speaker 2: you know, in the past, we've heard him say, like
Speaker 2: take credit for the whole ev revolution, which is why
Speaker 2: we've talked about how he felt so snubbed when Biden
Speaker 2: didn't so much as mentioned Tesla when he talked about
Speaker 2: the proliferation of EV's in the US.
Speaker 1: Dana, you talked about the cyber truck briefly, you know.
Speaker 1: I read your article on Bloomberg dot Com about sort
Speaker 1: of different guesses as to how many cyber trucks were sold.
Speaker 1: I think the analyst estimates range from anywhere from what
Speaker 1: several hundred to several thousand. We know that there was
Speaker 1: at least one cyber truck out there because there was
Speaker 1: a crash reported over the weekend involving a Toyota Corolla
Speaker 1: did not end super well for the Corolla, although there
Speaker 1: are no injuries. I mean, just just from sort of
Speaker 1: social media and scattered reports from Tesla dealerships, do we
Speaker 1: have any sense of how many cyber trucks are on
Speaker 1: the road or how this whole process is going that
Speaker 1: we've been talking about for the last few months.
Speaker 3: I think Elon tweeted over the weekend that there are
Speaker 3: a couple hundred out there now and a lot of
Speaker 3: them are in so a couple of hundred on the roads,
Speaker 3: I guess in the hands of customers. You know, there
Speaker 3: are cyber trucks in showrooms. You know, it's a big
Speaker 3: marketing thing for Tesla. They want people to come to
Speaker 3: the showroom to see the cyber truck and then hopefully
Speaker 3: like sit in a model why and then buy a
Speaker 3: model why. I mean I saw one in real life.
Speaker 3: I was walking to Trader Joe's and like one drove by,
Speaker 3: and I was like, oh, there's a cyber.
Speaker 2: Truck, so an actual moving one, an actual moving one.
Speaker 2: You know, they largely seem to be like on the
Speaker 2: road in Texas and in California. I think that's where
Speaker 2: the first deliveries are probably going to. But you know,
Speaker 2: they've warned that it's going to be a very slow ram.
Speaker 2: I just think the fact that they didn't break out
Speaker 2: how many of the delivered in today's quarterly sales report
Speaker 2: is just really telling, like it's not a lot. The
Speaker 2: crash that you mentioned was kind of classic in that, like,
Speaker 2: you know, we don't really I mean, most journalists don't
Speaker 2: write about car crashes unless it's a Tesla, and that's
Speaker 2: been like a beef that Tesla has had for quite
Speaker 2: some time. Like God, you know, like there are thousands
Speaker 2: of car crashes across the country every day and like
Speaker 2: none of them make headlines unless it's Tesla. In this case,
Speaker 2: I think the Corolla across the median and like ran
Speaker 2: into the cyber truck, and there's no evidence that the
Speaker 2: cyber truck caused this crash.
Speaker 1: And crucially, I think you know, the Corolla driver's okay,
Speaker 1: which obviously there are people warning and probably validly warning
Speaker 1: about the size of this thing and the potential danger
Speaker 1: composed to sedans, although in this case it seems like
Speaker 1: luckily everybody was okay. I mean, for me, the big
Speaker 1: thing with the cyber truck is that this, you know,
Speaker 1: it's this kind of boundary breaking vehicle. It's totally different,
Speaker 1: it's totally sci fi and because of the way it's
Speaker 1: rolling out, there's a bit of a letdown here, and
Speaker 1: we see it in these numbers, you know, we see
Speaker 1: it over the last few weeks where Elon Musk did
Speaker 1: this amazing thing. He introduced this like back to the
Speaker 1: future car and it's kind of like, you know, not
Speaker 1: a whole lot of excitement, partly because they haven't managed
Speaker 1: to get these on the road.
Speaker 2: All the ones I've seen in San Francisco have been
Speaker 2: prototypes that actual employees are testing or driving. Yeah, they
Speaker 2: say RC and the side release candidate.
Speaker 1: Does that make you the coolest person in San Francisco
Speaker 1: or the least cool person in San Francisco, Sarah?
Speaker 2: That I've seen them, they're just surrounding by.
Speaker 1: You Ris here. All right. So last thing I want
Speaker 1: to do before we move on is just is Dan,
Speaker 1: I just get a sense from you over what this
Speaker 1: means for the for Tesla going forward. So we're going
Speaker 1: to see an earnings report at the end of the
Speaker 1: at the end of the month. What are you thinking
Speaker 1: about there? What are you thinking about kind of looking
Speaker 1: ahead for Elon Musk's car company.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the big question I think on everybody's mind
Speaker 3: is what guidance does Tesla give for twenty twenty four
Speaker 3: in terms of how many vehicles are they going to deliver?
Speaker 3: You know, they set a target of one point eight
Speaker 3: million for twenty twenty three. They met that target, but
Speaker 3: what is it for twenty twenty four?
Speaker 1: Is it like.
Speaker 3: Barely any growth? Is it going to be like two million,
Speaker 3: Is it going to be two point five? Is it
Speaker 3: going to be three? I mean, Elon is always about growth,
Speaker 3: and they don't really have They have like a pretty
Speaker 3: stale lineup right now, and the cyber truck is not
Speaker 3: out in high volumes. So how are they going to
Speaker 3: grow given that, like their best seller.
Speaker 1: The Model Why, is four years old.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm sure that they'll like refresh it, they'll
Speaker 3: probably enter some new markets, but they don't have anything
Speaker 3: fancy and snazzy, and the cyber truck is going to
Speaker 3: be very slow going, So just the whole question of
Speaker 3: their guidance is the big one for investors. And then
Speaker 3: how do these price cuts that they've had all year
Speaker 3: impact the margins and it? You know, in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 3: Elon Musk made this very shrewd decision that they were
Speaker 3: going to chase volume over margins to kind of protect
Speaker 3: their market share, and that gambit basically worked. I mean,
Speaker 3: they cut prices, they moved metal, but how far how
Speaker 3: low are they willing to go?
Speaker 2: I mean, are they going to.
Speaker 3: Continue to cut prices or have we reached kind of
Speaker 3: like a steady state. And then do they start advertising,
Speaker 3: Like what are they going to do to actually get
Speaker 3: new people into these cars? People who are not like
Speaker 3: your generic like sort of early adopter, tech savvy, you know,
Speaker 3: environmental climate change caring person Like the wave of people
Speaker 3: who wanted to buy an EV basically already have out.
Speaker 3: It's this like real effort to kind of convince Middle
Speaker 3: America to consider an EV and that's something that Tesla
Speaker 3: hasn't really had.
Speaker 2: To do before. Well, we know they're going to advertise
Speaker 2: on X yeah, which really needs it, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: I wonder how much they'll spend with what the spend
Speaker 3: will be.
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's talk about X then, because you know,
Speaker 1: on the last day of twenty twenty three, Axios reported
Speaker 1: that Fidelity, as I said at the top of the show,
Speaker 1: the big asset manager, cut its valuation of the company, uh,
Speaker 1: making it seventy one point five percent less valuable than
Speaker 1: it was at the time that Elon Musk purchased it
Speaker 1: for forty four billion. I think that implies a valuation
Speaker 1: about just over twelve billion. This disclosure includes a nearly
Speaker 1: eleven percent drop in November. Sarah, I found myself kind
Speaker 1: of a nerd to this kind of report just because
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, yeah, you know this platform that's been
Speaker 1: gasping for air for months that Elon Musk has been
Speaker 1: you know, insulting you know, advertisers. It's almost like, yeah, no, crap,
Speaker 1: it's lost a lot of money. What does this report mean?
Speaker 2: I think that there is some real significance here because
Speaker 2: we don't have any insight right now into how X
Speaker 2: is valuing itself, how they are telling bankers they're doing,
Speaker 2: and investors what kind of information those people are getting,
Speaker 2: and so the Fidelity numbers, although you know it's not
Speaker 2: perfect we don't know how many shares they hold, we
Speaker 2: don't know what kind of information they get from from X.
Speaker 2: It is at least like a rare public disclosure of
Speaker 2: something about this company.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I guess it's also a counterpoint. You know.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately for me, I listened to the Kathy Wood Elon
Speaker 1: Musk Twitter spaces Kathy would investor in X, and you know,
Speaker 1: sort of spent most of the time talking her book
Speaker 1: and was sort of keeping praise on the on Elon
Speaker 1: Musk's campaign to take on the woke mind virus, as
Speaker 1: she sees it. And so of course this is a
Speaker 1: counterpoint and maybe like a douse of cold water or
Speaker 1: something on the kind of universe of boosters who've been
Speaker 1: kind of promoting this thing.
Speaker 3: I think it's also just interesting because it really kind
Speaker 3: of punctuates this myth of Elon as being this financial genius, right,
Speaker 3: like he has done all these incredible things. SpaceX is
Speaker 3: the most valuable private company in the US. Tesla is
Speaker 3: like the eighth or ninth largest company in the world.
Speaker 3: He like really shrewdly raised capital at a time when
Speaker 3: interest rates were low, and then like X is like
Speaker 3: the big time that he really missed time in the market,
Speaker 3: he overpaid, He spent forty four billion dollars on this
Speaker 3: thing right before the market started to createor and he
Speaker 3: has not been able to turn it around. And like
Speaker 3: for him to sort of be the owner of a
Speaker 3: company that is now worth far less than what he
Speaker 3: paid for it, and then he's got all this debt.
Speaker 2: That he has to service. And also I think what's
Speaker 2: important here is this number is not about Elon. I
Speaker 2: mean a lot of the other rhetoric about X, the
Speaker 2: other decisions we've seen people make have been about his
Speaker 2: behavior directly, you know, advertisers pulling money. Elon Musk calls
Speaker 2: them haters, says, go f yourself. Like he he really
Speaker 2: feels like every time somebody takes money away from X,
Speaker 2: that's you know, a personal slight against him and the
Speaker 2: company and the future. This you know, consciousness of humanity
Speaker 2: or what have you. This is about Fidelity telling its
Speaker 2: investors here's what we have and what it's worth based
Speaker 2: on our best guesses, based on all the numbers we
Speaker 2: have all you know, whether it's a third party valuation
Speaker 2: or you know, market comps or what have you. This
Speaker 2: is Fidelity, you know, not making it about Elon just
Speaker 2: kind of giving an update to their portfolio.
Speaker 1: Do we have any sense actually what goes into this
Speaker 1: this sort of valuation, or like what they're even going on.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's that's the hard part. It's all behind
Speaker 2: the scenes that we know that X has given its
Speaker 2: largest holders some information about the progress of the business.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg reported that the company's ad sales were projected to
Speaker 2: slump this year to about two point five billion. That
Speaker 2: is a dramatic slump from from last year. So there's
Speaker 2: some real, you know, money at play here. I should
Speaker 2: note that this change in valuation happened almost right after
Speaker 2: the Musk comments to advertisers at the deal Book conference.
Speaker 2: This is a November thirtieth update, so it could have
Speaker 2: even you know, they're going to have to reevaluate it.
Speaker 1: And does this have any impact on the you know,
Speaker 1: the debt payments that Elon Musk give, you know, the
Speaker 1: efforts to renegotiate debt, like the like what Sarah looking ahead,
Speaker 1: where is X financially and like, does does Elon Musk
Speaker 1: have you know, have any hope of of sort of
Speaker 1: quickly turning things around?
Speaker 2: Well quickly is going to be tough, but you know,
Speaker 2: all of the banks have the debt on hand on
Speaker 2: their balance sheets. Obviously it's been uncomfortable for them. They
Speaker 2: can't sell it. They've tried, and they have this agreement
Speaker 2: amongst themselves that if they sell it, you know, everyone
Speaker 2: gets to sell it at the same price. So it's
Speaker 2: not like, you know, Morgan Stanley can just sell it
Speaker 2: at twenty cents on the dollar and get rid of it.
Speaker 2: If they sell it at that amount, everyone is allowed
Speaker 2: to sell whatever portion they have. That's so they don't
Speaker 2: end up undercutting each other on offloading this debt. Eventually,
Speaker 2: so a few things could happen. I mean, there could
Speaker 2: be restructuring of X. If it gets really bad, they
Speaker 2: could go into some as Musk has hinted at. I
Speaker 2: don't think that they will because if that happens, then
Speaker 2: all the equity would just become zero. And I don't
Speaker 2: think that Musk would want to do that to all
Speaker 2: his close friends and investors that put money into this company.
Speaker 2: And he's actually said like, I don't I don't plan
Speaker 2: to start losing money for people now. So I think
Speaker 2: he's going to try to find a way to turn
Speaker 2: it around. My best guess is that he's going to
Speaker 2: use the Grock AI as like a launch point for
Speaker 2: trying to make X about more than just a social
Speaker 2: network and ride the AI hypewave. That's one way that
Speaker 2: could happen. But then, you know, everyone has a chatbot now,
Speaker 2: so how special is that?
Speaker 4: I guess we'll see, all right, Before we get to
Speaker 4: any you know, full fully fledged predictions, I want to
Speaker 4: ask one more question to Dana, which is, you know,
Speaker 4: we've been talking I feel like for a year, over
Speaker 4: a year really over.
Speaker 1: The sort of behavior on X potentially spilling over to Tesla.
Speaker 1: You know, we got these new numbers basically meeting expectations.
Speaker 1: Why hasn't what's happening on X seemed to have an
Speaker 1: impact on Tesla? And can we are we getting to
Speaker 1: the point where you can include maybe it won't like
Speaker 1: maybe maybe the attributes of the car, you know, exist
Speaker 1: on their own.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, you and I have kind of wrote
Speaker 3: a story about this last year, right, Like, there's definitely
Speaker 3: anecdotal evidence that there are there's like a never Tesla crowd.
Speaker 3: There are consumers out in the world who will never
Speaker 3: buy a Tesla because they think that what Elon Musk
Speaker 3: has done to Twitter slash X is like abhorrent and
Speaker 3: like they're just never going to buy a Tesla. But fundamentally,
Speaker 3: people buy cars because of the price and the range
Speaker 3: and the quality of the technology, and like Tesla is
Speaker 3: still kind of the main game in town, at least
Speaker 3: here in the United States. I think the other thing
Speaker 3: is that how Elon behaves, it's so much more of
Speaker 3: like a US centric thing that people pay attention to
Speaker 3: than it is globally, Like I'm not I'm not aware
Speaker 3: of like how closely the average consumer in China tracks
Speaker 3: what Elon Musk is saying on Twitter at you know,
Speaker 3: two o'clock in the morning. And so the brand has
Speaker 3: always been very closely intertwined with Elon. But what you're
Speaker 3: seeing on X and Sarah alluded to this earlier, is
Speaker 3: like a lot more Tesla executives are now using X
Speaker 3: to kind of promote the company, like like more executives
Speaker 3: are tweeting, you know, every every facet of Tesla now
Speaker 3: has its own handle, like the cyber truck and the
Speaker 3: recruiting team and the factories and like optimists th Robot
Speaker 3: has its own like you know, Twitter account, And so
Speaker 3: you're seeing more the company do a lot more kind
Speaker 3: of marketing on X. And to Sarah's point, they're going
Speaker 3: to start advertising or they already have or like that.
Speaker 3: That's going to be a really interesting thing to watch
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: All right, so we'll we'll keep an eye on that.
Speaker 1: But now I want to turn to predictions. It's it's
Speaker 1: the beginning of the year. I think we should go around.
Speaker 1: Each of us should make a prediction. Sarah, let's start
Speaker 1: with you predictions for twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: So I think that we are going to see X
Speaker 2: have much less influence on the twenty twenty four elections
Speaker 2: than everyone thinks they will. I think by then the
Speaker 2: political conversation will have moved maybe elsewhere, or or if
Speaker 2: it is if it is another Trump versus Biden election,
Speaker 2: I think that there's just going to be a lot
Speaker 2: of widespread apathy about that pairing and people who dislike
Speaker 2: both candidates, and there just won't be nearly the level
Speaker 2: of discussion line that we saw in the prior election.
Speaker 2: So maybe this is my like fingers crossed.
Speaker 1: But you're just wish casting here, I think.
Speaker 2: Well, I also think that you know, we're seeing a
Speaker 2: decrease in relevance of the platform itself.
Speaker 1: When Donald Trump names Grock his you know, likely candidate
Speaker 1: for Secretary of Defense, then you will have to eat
Speaker 1: your words. I will, Dana, what about you? What do
Speaker 1: we have? Can you? Sarah gave us Actually what I
Speaker 1: think is a pretty positive prediction. It's something to look
Speaker 1: forward to for twenty twenty four. What do you have?
Speaker 1: What are you sort of hoping for or expecting in
Speaker 1: the new year.
Speaker 3: So I guess my prediction is that I think Elon
Speaker 3: Musk is going to increasingly cast himself as like an
Speaker 3: aggrieved victim of government overreach. And we've already seen this
Speaker 3: play out with you know, he has tangled with regulatory
Speaker 3: agencies his entire career. You know, NITS is the fun Police,
Speaker 3: the SEC is this Short Seller Enrichment Commission.
Speaker 2: The FTC, and the FCC. He's no fan of them.
Speaker 3: And like, as his empire grows, like various government agencies
Speaker 3: are going to try to, you know, rain him in
Speaker 3: with varying degrees and pretty limited success. But I think
Speaker 3: that going into an election cycle, you're just going to
Speaker 3: see Elon increasingly take the tack that like he is
Speaker 3: a victim of big government overreach and that all these
Speaker 3: regulatory agencies and Biden in particular are out to get him,
Speaker 3: and that like these mean government people are trying to
Speaker 3: you know, ruin him and don't appreciate all that he's
Speaker 3: done for job growth in the United States.
Speaker 1: My prediction is sort of related to Sarah's, but it's
Speaker 1: maybe a little less serious. I predict that Elon Musk
Speaker 1: and Georgia Maloney, the leader of Italy, will intensify their alliance.
Speaker 1: However that means, and I do think we should be
Speaker 1: on Elon Musk romance watch here. I hope I'm not
Speaker 1: overstepping the bounds of the good sense of this podcast,
Speaker 1: but Elon Musk spent part of December there. He spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time talking about the need to make
Speaker 1: more Italians, and I do think there's some breadcrumbs here
Speaker 1: if we're willing to follow him, I.
Speaker 3: Think the podcast might want to consider like a trip
Speaker 3: to Italy to kind of do some on the ground
Speaker 3: reporting here. I mean, it seems like this is you know,
Speaker 3: New Year's New Beginnings Coliseum episode. A lot of people
Speaker 3: take stock of their relationships when the New year begins.
Speaker 1: I agree we need an off site and I will
Speaker 1: bring that up with David Popadopolis the next time he's here. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's leave it there. Thanks for listening to Elon Inc.
Speaker 1: And thanks to our panel Sarah Fryar and Dana Hall.
Speaker 2: Always a pleasure anytime.
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Stacy Wong. Naomi Shaven and
Speaker 1: Rayhan Harmansi are our senior editors. The idea for this
Speaker 1: very show also came from Rayhon Blake Maples handles engineering,
Speaker 1: and we get special editing assistants from the one and
Speaker 1: only Jeffrey Grocott. Our supervising producer is Magnus Hendrickson. Thanks
Speaker 1: a bunch to BusinessWeek Editor Joel Weber. The Elon Inc.
Speaker 1: Theme is written and performed by Taka Yazuzawa and Alex
Speaker 1: Sigierira Sage Bauman is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts and
Speaker 1: our executive producer. I'm Max Chafkin. If you have a minute,
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Speaker 1: us and we will appreciate it. Happy New Year to
Speaker 1: you and see you next week.