Speaker 1: What do you think of when you think of Tesla,
Speaker 1: or maybe the better question is who do you think of?
Speaker 1: Tesla is unique in how closely customers and investors link
Speaker 1: their feelings about the company to their feelings about its CEO,
Speaker 1: Elon Musk, and Musk you might have noticed, has been
Speaker 1: making plenty of news lately.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg has been reporting that Twitter laid off about half
Speaker 2: of its workforce last week. Some thirty seven hundred workers
Speaker 2: were fired via email.
Speaker 1: Elon setting off an uproar with a series of tweets
Speaker 1: suggesting a negotiation between Ukraine and Russia.
Speaker 3: On Twitter, Elon Musk said he'd be up for a
Speaker 3: cage match if Zuckerberg agreed. Zuck fired back on Instagram,
Speaker 3: simply saying, send me a location.
Speaker 4: I'll say what I want to say, and if if
Speaker 4: the consequence of that is losing money, so Beia.
Speaker 1: So you wonder will Musk's very public and divisive personality
Speaker 1: impact the fortunes of the world's mode most valuable automaker.
Speaker 1: Tom Randall, a senior reporter for Bloombergreen went to find out.
Speaker 3: A person said, I feel like my original interest in
Speaker 3: Tesla was partly built on my trust and interest in him,
Speaker 3: and now my continued interest in Tesla survives despite him.
Speaker 1: I'm west Kosova today on the Big Take. Tesla owners
Speaker 1: are conflicted about Tesla's owner. Hey, Tom, great to see
Speaker 1: you again.
Speaker 4: Anyway, good to see it too.
Speaker 1: Tell me about this project because it was a huge
Speaker 1: undertaking and it's really interesting.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 3: So if you can think back to the summer of
Speaker 3: twenty eighteen, like this was when Tesla had hit kind
Speaker 3: of peak drama. It was on the verge of bankruptcy
Speaker 3: because they couldn't make the Model three. You know, they
Speaker 3: had built these two huge factories and just nothing was working.
Speaker 3: And then on July first, this was five years ago,
Speaker 3: Tesla announced a breakthrough and they had made five thousand
Speaker 3: cars in a single week, and that was kind of the.
Speaker 4: Week that changed the world for evs.
Speaker 2: Tesla is said to be pausing some Model three production
Speaker 2: just days after reaching his target of five thousand cars
Speaker 2: a week. The news comes as some analyst question whether
Speaker 2: company can sustain those high output levels.
Speaker 3: So what we wanted to do back then was no,
Speaker 3: like what kinds of vehicles was Tesla making, you know,
Speaker 3: could these compete with the rest of the auto industry
Speaker 3: or were these, you know, a bunch of lemons. So
Speaker 3: we reached out to Tesla owners and about seven thousand
Speaker 3: of them took our rather extensive survey about their car
Speaker 3: and about their experience buying it, and.
Speaker 4: There were a lot of mixed results, but there was one.
Speaker 3: Kind of big takeaway back then, and that was that
Speaker 3: they had built an internal combustion killer.
Speaker 4: People loved these vehicles.
Speaker 3: After they got over some initial like scratches in the
Speaker 3: paint and you know, misaligned panels on the doors. After that,
Speaker 3: they really their cars. So now it's been five years
Speaker 3: and we wanted to know if the car had held up.
Speaker 3: You know, this is the world's first mass produced EV
Speaker 3: and you know, how had people's opinions changed. A ton
Speaker 3: of interesting results, but once again, one thing kind of
Speaker 3: really stood out, and it wasn't about the car. It
Speaker 3: was about the man who makes them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's really kind of the focus of your story.
Speaker 1: Is that Elon Musk, who is once part of the
Speaker 1: appeal for a lot of Tesla buyers, Now those same
Speaker 1: people you returned to them these years later have really
Speaker 1: mixed feelings about him.
Speaker 4: It's really interesting.
Speaker 3: Several dozen questions that we asked verbatim the exact same
Speaker 3: question back in twenty eighteen and now, and these are
Speaker 3: the same people, you know, these are the initial buyers,
Speaker 3: the people who had taken a risk on Elon Muskin,
Speaker 3: on Tesla. And out of all those questions, by far,
Speaker 3: the biggest change in opinion, and it wasn't even close,
Speaker 3: was opinions about Elon Musk. You know, that is not
Speaker 3: the only takeaway of the story. We broke this story
Speaker 3: up into three large parts. We have over forty graphics,
Speaker 3: and to me, what really stood out is a kind
Speaker 3: of dichotomy between you know, how people felt about the
Speaker 3: cars and how they felt about Musk, and it's kind
Speaker 3: of hard to overstate both feelings. Driving enjoyment. It was
Speaker 3: almost a perfect score among thousands of people. It was
Speaker 3: over ninety nine percent of them said the Model three
Speaker 3: was a joy to drive, and like, when can you
Speaker 3: get ninety nine percent of people to agree on anything?
Speaker 3: It's astonishing. And then on the other hand was Musk's
Speaker 3: harm to Tesla's reputation, which was also overwhelming. People overwhelmingly
Speaker 3: said that.
Speaker 1: What in particular about Elon Musk did people say they
Speaker 1: didn't like or had concerns about it?
Speaker 3: All surrounds Twitter and his acquisition of Twitter last October
Speaker 3: and kind of his behavior on Twitter since then. I
Speaker 3: think he's come across as a bully to some of them. Also,
Speaker 3: his politics have shifted. He brought in Florida Governor Ron
Speaker 3: DeSantis in for his campaign announcement for President of the
Speaker 3: United States. He has hosted Tucker Carlson's show and promoted
Speaker 3: them regularly on Twitter once he was let go from
Speaker 3: Fox News. And you know, he has amplified a lot
Speaker 3: of conspiracy theories that have been wrong and you know,
Speaker 3: I think have been abhorrent.
Speaker 4: To a lot of people.
Speaker 1: And what specifically do people say in the survey about that.
Speaker 3: Well, they're angry with him for doing it, and they
Speaker 3: want him to stop. And there's a real sense of
Speaker 3: being deeply conflicted because, you know, Tesla owners, I think,
Speaker 3: more so than the general population, give Elon a lot
Speaker 3: of credit for building the things that he's built and
Speaker 3: building something that they all have deep feelings toward. You know, Tesla,
Speaker 3: it's brand and it's superchargers, pushing the future forward on
Speaker 3: electric vehicles. This is something that all of these early
Speaker 3: Tesla owners feel very very strongly about, and they do
Speaker 3: think that Elon still supports all of those things, but
Speaker 3: they feel like he no longer represents their values. We
Speaker 3: asked a number of questions about, you know, does he
Speaker 3: still serve as a role model for other business leaders,
Speaker 3: and people answered overwhelmingly no. And whether or not Elon
Speaker 3: Musk's politics represent theirs, if his values represent theirs, if
Speaker 3: his actions have impacted the brand, and that one people
Speaker 3: felt very strongly that he had hurt the brand of Tesla.
Speaker 1: Maybe you can tell us what happened in between the
Speaker 1: time of that first survey when you said it was
Speaker 1: pretty precarious for Tesla and now, because boy, have their
Speaker 1: fortunes changed.
Speaker 3: So much has changed since then. I mean, Tesla is
Speaker 3: now the world's most valuable car maker by far. You
Speaker 3: can add up the next ten combined and their market
Speaker 3: value is equivalent to Tesla's. And Elon Musk has become
Speaker 3: the world's richest person because of that. And now electric vehicles.
Speaker 3: The move toward electric vehicles around the world seems to
Speaker 3: have hit kind of an inevitable stage. More than five
Speaker 3: percent of the world's sales last year were electric, and
Speaker 3: that's not including hybrids, that's just pure electric vehicles and
Speaker 3: Tesla's kind of leading that charge.
Speaker 1: Tell us how you conducted this survey, because it was
Speaker 1: really big and you got a lot of information from people.
Speaker 4: It was multipart.
Speaker 3: First, we went back to the people who responded to
Speaker 3: our original survey back in twenty nineteen, and out of those,
Speaker 3: I think we had several thousand people responded again.
Speaker 4: So we got a large response.
Speaker 3: Rate there that we were able to compare their responses
Speaker 3: to back then. Then we also opened up a second
Speaker 3: study of new Tesla owners just so that we could
Speaker 3: make sure that you know, these original Tesla owners were
Speaker 3: kind of representative of feelings from.
Speaker 4: People who purchased their cars later.
Speaker 3: In all, if you just look at their comments when
Speaker 3: we had open ended questions, we had more words. The
Speaker 3: word count of their comments between the older surveys and
Speaker 3: this new survey was more than the entire Harry Potter
Speaker 3: series combined.
Speaker 1: One of the things in the earlier survey seemed to
Speaker 1: be that people felt cool driving at Tesla because it
Speaker 1: was an electric vehicle, but also because Elon Musk was
Speaker 1: kind of cool. How has that changed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So one of the things that we wanted to
Speaker 3: do with this survey is really allow people to speak
Speaker 3: in their own words. So we have these kind of
Speaker 3: comment graphics that you can search through all of the
Speaker 3: original responses and there's a perfect comment in response to
Speaker 3: what you're saying. A person said, I feel like my
Speaker 3: original interest in Tesla was partly built on my trust
Speaker 3: and interest in him, and now my continued interest in
Speaker 3: Tesla survives despite him, And I think that was kind
Speaker 3: of a common theme in there. Another person said, you know,
Speaker 3: Elon Musk is one hundred percent the reason why I
Speaker 3: may never consider purchasing another Tesla again. I love the vehicle,
Speaker 3: but do not want to support someone who has such
Speaker 3: vitriol and low opinion of the very people who have made.
Speaker 4: Tesla a success.
Speaker 1: One of the things that's so fascinating about this is
Speaker 1: I wonder how many Toyota owners could tell you the
Speaker 1: name of the CEO of Toyota, or Volkswagon owners name
Speaker 1: a brand, and yet Elon must seem to be so
Speaker 1: tied up in the identity of not just the cars,
Speaker 1: but of the people who bought them.
Speaker 3: One of the things that shifted was people's how they
Speaker 3: report their sense of community, and in that last survey
Speaker 3: back in twenty nineteen, people would talk about you know,
Speaker 3: you would see another Tesla driving on.
Speaker 4: The road and you would wave to them, or you know.
Speaker 3: At the supercharger, people would just strike up conversations everywhere
Speaker 3: you went, And now that is kind have changed. You know,
Speaker 3: part of that's inevitable, part of a company getting bigger,
Speaker 3: but part of it is, you know that they feel
Speaker 3: like this is almost like a political yard sign that
Speaker 3: they're driving around in that is expressing a certain kind
Speaker 3: of belief. And you know, as one person said, but
Speaker 3: I'd prefer that he not be so tied to the
Speaker 3: image of Tesla. I don't want my car to be
Speaker 3: an Elon Musk conversation starter. And you can imagine just
Speaker 3: rolling up to a friend's house and everybody just constantly
Speaker 3: wanting to start talking about Elon Musk, purely because they
Speaker 3: drive a Tesla. And you're right, there's no other vehicle
Speaker 3: in the world, and maybe no other product in the
Speaker 3: world that has that kind of symbolic resonance with the CEO.
Speaker 1: Now, these are some of the negative comments about Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: but you spoke to a lot of people, and not
Speaker 1: all people felt that way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, in fairness to Elon Musk, a lot
Speaker 3: of people still hold him in very high regard. Looking
Speaker 3: through the comments, a lot of people like to compare
Speaker 3: him to different figures, and there's a lot of you know,
Speaker 3: Edison and and Reford. You know, those were kind of
Speaker 3: the most common comparisons da Vinci, and almost all of
Speaker 3: them were positive, apart from the comparisons to Trump, and
Speaker 3: that was the number one comparison I think to another figure.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I mean.
Speaker 3: People still admire him, and even people who don't like
Speaker 3: his politics still like the company and what they're doing,
Speaker 3: and they think the company represents something that they like
Speaker 3: and they just kind of wish he would stick to that.
Speaker 1: After the break, how are veteran Tesla owners getting along
Speaker 1: with their cars? How We talked a lot about how
Speaker 1: Tesla owners feel about Elon Musk, But what about the
Speaker 1: cars themselves? Apart from Musk, you said, they really like
Speaker 1: the cars. Do they want to buy another one?
Speaker 3: To answer the first question, first, they love their model
Speaker 3: threes like that was an overwhelming response. They said, this
Speaker 3: car held up and it continues to kind of surprise
Speaker 3: and delight them with new updates to the vehicle. One
Speaker 3: person said, I'm not a car person, but this car
Speaker 3: touches my soul, you know, And that's the kind of
Speaker 3: depth of feeling that I think was expressed in this
Speaker 3: survey toward the Model three. So on a one to
Speaker 3: five scal, people said the Model three, they rated the
Speaker 3: performance of four point ninety five. You know, it's almost
Speaker 3: a perfect score. Ease of use four point eight three,
Speaker 3: you know, design of the vehicle four point seven seven,
Speaker 3: and reliability four point six y nine. Those are out
Speaker 3: of the park scores in terms of how people feel
Speaker 3: about their car. So we really wanted to explore this
Speaker 3: idea of whether these perceptions of musk were affecting people's
Speaker 3: car purchasing behaviors. So we asked them a number of
Speaker 3: questions about which vehicles they're looking at, if they're looking
Speaker 3: at a new car, or if they had sold their
Speaker 3: Model three and purchased another.
Speaker 4: Car, what vehicle did they purchase.
Speaker 3: And we all so ask them about their future plans
Speaker 3: to buy a Model three, And you know, it really
Speaker 3: stuck out how much people still plan to buy a
Speaker 3: Tesla between seventy five and eighty seven percent, depending kind
Speaker 3: of on how you ask the question of people who
Speaker 3: own a Model three plan to buy another Tesla in
Speaker 3: the future. So that's kind of an overwhelming brand loyalty, right,
Speaker 3: And I think any other company would be very happy
Speaker 3: with those numbers.
Speaker 4: The question is like, would those.
Speaker 3: Numbers be even higher if Elon weren't taking these political stands,
Speaker 3: And you know, there's a lot of indication that that
Speaker 3: is the case.
Speaker 4: It's been about five years.
Speaker 3: Now, and for people who buy new cars, that's about
Speaker 3: the time when people replace their cars once it comes
Speaker 3: out of warranty, they buy a new car. And so
Speaker 3: of the people who have sold their model threes, we
Speaker 3: asked them, you know, did you buy a Tesla or
Speaker 3: if you didn't, why not?
Speaker 4: And Elon Musk was the.
Speaker 3: Number one reason why they didn't buy another Tesla again.
Speaker 1: Tell me about those numbers they actually look like.
Speaker 3: So it's highly unusual for a CEO to actually be
Speaker 3: affecting buying decisions. But here, I think is an interesting example.
Speaker 3: Ninety six percent of owners with positive views of Musk
Speaker 3: said that they would buy a Tesla again. On the
Speaker 3: other hand, out of owners who said that they wouldn't
Speaker 3: buy a Tesla again, ninety one percent of them had
Speaker 3: very unfavorable opinions of Musk. So how they feel about
Speaker 3: the CEO really is driving decisions at the extreme ends.
Speaker 3: And another interesting result is that if you ask Tesla
Speaker 3: owners what vehicles they're considering buying in the next two years,
Speaker 3: the number one choice by far is.
Speaker 4: The Tesla cyber truck.
Speaker 3: Fifty two percent are considering that, followed by the Model
Speaker 3: Why at.
Speaker 4: Twenty four percent.
Speaker 3: Now, if you expand the options beyond other Teslas than
Speaker 3: the top choices the Rivian R one s but it
Speaker 3: doesn't even compare to the interest in the side truck.
Speaker 1: And why is it that people are so interested in
Speaker 1: this cyber truck.
Speaker 3: The first time I saw it, I didn't know how
Speaker 3: to kind of place it. I didn't know what I
Speaker 3: thought of it because it didn't look like a car
Speaker 3: to me. It didn't fit that kind of perception in
Speaker 3: my In my mind, it's extremely angular and huge flat surfaces,
Speaker 3: so a huge flat windshield. You know, it's all stainless
Speaker 3: steel as well, so it's a cyber truck. You know,
Speaker 3: it looks like something from a Mad Max kind of
Speaker 3: vision of the future. And you know, I think a
Speaker 3: lot of people kind of laughed at it and said,
Speaker 3: nobody would ever buy that, and that's going to stick
Speaker 3: out and I think as they've seen these vehicles over
Speaker 3: and over, they're starting to kind of put that in
Speaker 3: their mindset as you know, something that could be a vehicle,
Speaker 3: And I think opinions have changed, and I think people
Speaker 3: might be surprised by the amount of support that has
Speaker 3: built up for it.
Speaker 1: One other really interesting thing that you were able to
Speaker 1: find in the survey is about battery data. Evy, batteries
Speaker 1: have always been, you know, obviously the heart of the vehicle,
Speaker 1: but do they last? How long did they hold the charge?
Speaker 1: They're super expensive and difficult to replace. What did you
Speaker 1: find in the survey?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that was a big kind of unknown. Tesla
Speaker 3: has started to release some results on its Model X
Speaker 3: and Model S kind of their luxury vehicles, and how
Speaker 3: those batteries hold up over time, but we still didn't
Speaker 3: have any kind of indication for the Model three and
Speaker 3: Model Why, and these are by far the world's biggest sellers.
Speaker 3: The Model Why is going to be the world's best
Speaker 3: selling vehicle of any type this year, or it's tracking
Speaker 3: toward that, which is really remarkable. But we and yet
Speaker 3: we don't know how those kinds of batteries hold up
Speaker 3: over time, And so we were able to kind of
Speaker 3: plot this out among hundreds and hundreds of Tesla owners,
Speaker 3: and what we found.
Speaker 4: Is that the batteries lost between eight.
Speaker 3: And nine percent of their capacity after one hundred thousand miles.
Speaker 3: And you know, this is the first major study of
Speaker 3: the Model three, Model Y battery degradation.
Speaker 4: Tesla has the Model S.
Speaker 3: And Model X, and those were two earlier vehicles and
Speaker 3: their luxury vehicles, and these results are consistent.
Speaker 4: With Tesla's data for those.
Speaker 3: And it's consistent and perhaps even a little better than
Speaker 3: I think what most industry estimates would be for battery degradation.
Speaker 3: So I would say that that's a good result for them,
Speaker 3: although there's a couple of big caveats. First, I think
Speaker 3: there's a wide distribution of results, meaning that you know,
Speaker 3: at fifty thousand miles, some people had full battery capacity
Speaker 3: like a brand new car, while others had huge drops,
Speaker 3: you know, ten fifteen percent of battery capacity in the
Speaker 3: first few years of ownership. And that variation was reflected
Speaker 3: in people's comments about the car, where you know, some.
Speaker 4: People were dissatisfied.
Speaker 3: You know, they had planned on having a certain amount
Speaker 3: of capacity for their lifestyle, and you know that kind
Speaker 3: of disappeared faster than they expected. The other caveat is
Speaker 3: winter driving, and we already knew that batteries perform worse
Speaker 3: in very cold temperatures, and part of that is just
Speaker 3: keeping the car warm.
Speaker 4: You know, you've got the heater on. But there's a
Speaker 4: pretty big drop.
Speaker 3: But we didn't really know what kind of drop that was,
Speaker 3: so we surveyed it, and out of thousands of Tesla owners,
Speaker 3: the average decline was about twenty eight percent of battery
Speaker 3: capacity at freezing temperatures. And I think, as somebody who
Speaker 3: pays close attention to battery technology, that's not a very
Speaker 3: surprising number. I think that's kind of in line with
Speaker 3: what I would have expected. But I think for new owners,
Speaker 3: a lot of people were unprepared for that, and this
Speaker 3: really threw a wrench in their plans for how to
Speaker 3: use the car.
Speaker 1: This survey also gives some fresh numbers on two of
Speaker 1: Tesla's most innovative and also controversial features, and that's the
Speaker 1: full self driving feature and autopilot. Can you tell us first,
Speaker 1: what is the difference between those two things for people
Speaker 1: who don't drive Tesla's autopilot.
Speaker 3: You know, Tesla was kind of the first or one
Speaker 3: of the first to come out with. It's a driver's system,
Speaker 3: So on the highway, it will match the speed of
Speaker 3: cars in front of you, or it will keep up
Speaker 3: with the speed limit, it will keep you in your lane.
Speaker 3: Those things are kind of commonplace now, but Tesla had
Speaker 3: one of the earliest systems and one of the systems
Speaker 3: that they really allowed it to kind of do more
Speaker 3: for you than anybody else was willing to do. But
Speaker 3: looking at these stats of how people feel about autopilot
Speaker 3: really kind of show you the complexity of this issue.
Speaker 3: On the one hand, twenty eight percent of owners said
Speaker 3: that autopilot has put them in a dangerous situation, and
Speaker 3: that's up from thirteen percent in twenty nineteen. Now that
Speaker 3: sounds like a really bad number. But on the other hand,
Speaker 3: thirty eight percent of owners say that it's actually saved
Speaker 3: them from a dangerous situation, and that's up from twenty
Speaker 3: eight percent in twenty nineteen. Now they have this other product,
Speaker 3: full self driving, which you pay fifteen thousand dollars to
Speaker 3: have acce this, but it's not really full self driving.
Speaker 3: It makes a lot of the car's decisions for you,
Speaker 3: but you have to constantly be in touch with the
Speaker 3: wheel and ready.
Speaker 4: To take over because it is a work in progress.
Speaker 3: And this is the first real survey of two thousand
Speaker 3: of the full self driving what TESS called beta testers.
Speaker 3: So these are the people who have this enabled on
Speaker 3: their system and are using it day to day, and we.
Speaker 4: Had a lot of mixed results.
Speaker 3: We asked people how it performed against all sorts of
Speaker 3: different challenges, and what we found is, you know, it
Speaker 3: did really well in some of the very basics, like
Speaker 3: stopping at stop lights and stop signs. People were very
Speaker 3: satisfied with that, did pretty good around pedestrians, but it
Speaker 3: did not well in construction zones, around emergency vehicles, and
Speaker 3: in several other of the trickier categories. And the results
Speaker 3: show that they really are still a long way to
Speaker 3: what they're calling full self driving. Interesting thing about full
Speaker 3: self driving is how much people are using this. Tesla
Speaker 3: owners estimated on average that autopilot or full self driving
Speaker 3: was deployed for about seventy percent of their highway miles
Speaker 3: and almost thirty percent of city driving.
Speaker 1: And where's Tesla say about those kinds of results?
Speaker 3: So I think the company is careful to say that
Speaker 3: you always have to have your hands on the wheel
Speaker 3: that this is a work in progress and that it's learning,
Speaker 3: whereas Elon Musk will tweet about how the next iteration
Speaker 3: of it is mind blowing and incredible and really pushes
Speaker 3: the idea that they're almost there.
Speaker 1: There's been a lot in the news lately about the
Speaker 1: supercharger network, which is pretty important for people who want
Speaker 1: to drive outside of cities or highly populated areas where
Speaker 1: there tend to be more Tesla's how do people feel
Speaker 1: about their ability to fuel up?
Speaker 3: This has been arguably Tesla's most important tactical move as
Speaker 3: a company. The United States did not have charging infrastructure
Speaker 3: when Tesla was ready to start selling cars, so it
Speaker 3: built its own. And now just in the last few months,
Speaker 3: we've seen almost every major automaker.
Speaker 4: Reach deals with Tesla.
Speaker 3: You know, Ford and GM at BMW and also the
Speaker 3: other charging companies to use Tesla's plug in technology.
Speaker 5: Starting early next year, Fords could plug into one of
Speaker 5: the thousands of Tesla charging stations in the US and Canada.
Speaker 5: Ford President and CEO Jim Farley says the deal will
Speaker 5: more than double Ford's charging network as the company prepares
Speaker 5: to launch a new series of electric vehicles. In twenty
Speaker 5: twenty five.
Speaker 3: It's very quickly becoming the de facto plug for the
Speaker 3: United States. You know, Tesla owners, we asked them about
Speaker 3: this plan, Tesla's plan to open up the supercharging network
Speaker 3: to other brands, and they were very mixed.
Speaker 4: About this idea.
Speaker 3: A lot of people said that this was great because
Speaker 3: it was going to really open up EVUS to a
Speaker 3: lot more people in the United States, and others said
Speaker 3: that this was going to lead to longer lines at
Speaker 3: the supercharger and why should four be able to benefit
Speaker 3: from this product that they didn't contribute to the cost
Speaker 3: of building it. We did ask about EV satisfaction, like
Speaker 3: the EV lifestyle, how did they like living with the
Speaker 3: EV's And one question that really affected how they answered
Speaker 3: that was whether or not they had a charger at
Speaker 3: their home. So for people who have chargers at their home,
Speaker 3: they say that driving an ev is more convenient than
Speaker 3: keeping their gasoline vehicle fueled. But for people who don't
Speaker 3: have a charger at home, they tend to say it's less.
Speaker 3: So it makes a big difference, and that's going to
Speaker 3: be one of the challenges going forward in the United
Speaker 3: States is making sure there's enough chargers and figuring out
Speaker 3: the solution for people who don't have the ability to
Speaker 3: charge in their garage.
Speaker 1: Tom, I imagine you went to Tesla with all this
Speaker 1: information and asked them what they had to say. What
Speaker 1: did they have to say?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we sent an email to Elon. They don't have
Speaker 3: any public relations department anymore. They ended up that I
Speaker 3: think in twenty nineteen. But we sent an email directly
Speaker 3: to him and told him about what the results would
Speaker 3: be and asked if he'd like to comment on it,
Speaker 3: And we haven't heard back.
Speaker 1: When we come back. Now that Tesla's big in mainstream,
Speaker 1: does Musk loom is large in buyer's minds. Looking over
Speaker 1: all these responses and all this data about how people
Speaker 1: feel about Elon Musk, Ultimately, does it really matter how
Speaker 1: people feel about Musk when it comes to their decisions
Speaker 1: about Tesla.
Speaker 3: I think for Tesla it's a tricky question. I think
Speaker 3: for any other company the answer is most likely no.
Speaker 3: But for Tesla, this is a company whose whole kind
Speaker 3: of image and identity.
Speaker 4: Is tied up with this guy.
Speaker 3: His struggles have been Tesla's struggles and vice versa, and
Speaker 3: so I think it matters in terms of that story
Speaker 3: that kind of helped Tesla get to where it is today.
Speaker 3: That struggle, you know, if people don't buy into the
Speaker 3: story as much as they used to. I think over time,
Speaker 3: you know, Tesla will lose some of the magic of
Speaker 3: its brand that's taken it to where it is today,
Speaker 3: especially with so much other competition entering into the marketplace.
Speaker 1: So if you were Elon Musk reading this survey, what
Speaker 1: would the big takeaways for you be? What would the
Speaker 1: lesson learn be?
Speaker 4: It's funny you say that.
Speaker 3: I have spoken to Tesla employees who were in the
Speaker 3: room near Elon Musk's desk when the first survey came
Speaker 3: out in twenty nineteen, and they said that when each
Speaker 3: new part came out, there would be cheers going up
Speaker 3: in the offices because of how overall it.
Speaker 4: Had been received.
Speaker 3: You know, that would quickly be followed by emails from
Speaker 3: the managers about things that they needed to put on
Speaker 3: their to do list.
Speaker 4: I don't know if he is reading it or not.
Speaker 3: If I were reading it about myself, I would have
Speaker 3: to take a moment to think about what it is
Speaker 3: I'm doing and.
Speaker 4: If it's worth the cost.
Speaker 3: Because I think he's lost some people who really really
Speaker 3: deeply supported him and no longer feel that support. As
Speaker 3: for the rest of the vehicle, I think Tesla can
Speaker 3: feel pretty good about the fact that their vehicle has
Speaker 3: held up across every reliability question that we asked. You know,
Speaker 3: people still really like this car, and they said that
Speaker 3: it's performed better than any other car that they've owned,
Speaker 3: And I think the people at Tesla can feel pretty
Speaker 3: good about that and about the direction of a lot
Speaker 3: of their new products.
Speaker 4: From insurance to solar.
Speaker 3: People really like the things that they're making and not
Speaker 3: get caught up in the politics of the CEO.
Speaker 1: Tom. Thanks so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 4: Thanks Lis, This has been great.
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