Speaker 1: Well, Elon Musk gives now the richest person on the planet.
Speaker 2: More than half the satellites in space are owned and
Speaker 2: controlled by one man.
Speaker 1: Starting his own artificial intelligence company.
Speaker 2: Well, he's a legitimate super genius. I mean legitimate.
Speaker 3: He says. He's always voted for Democrats, but this year
Speaker 3: it will be different. He'll vote Republican. There is a
Speaker 3: reason the US government is so reliant on him.
Speaker 4: Elon Musk is a scam artist and he's done nothing.
Speaker 3: Anything he does is fascinating the people.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Elon Inc. Where we discuss Elon Musk's past
Speaker 2: corporate empire, his latest gambits and antics, and how to
Speaker 2: make sense of it all. I'm your host, David Popadopolis.
Speaker 2: I really thought we'd talk about Cybertruck this week, and
Speaker 2: we will, I promise. But first, I'm sure you've seen
Speaker 2: the videos and photos. On Monday, Elon Musk put on
Speaker 2: body armor to take a tour in Israeli kibbutz that
Speaker 2: was attacked on October seventh. Speaking to Israel Prime Minister
Speaker 2: Benjamin and Yahuan x, he offered to help rebuild Gaza.
Speaker 2: Those are a crazy couple of sentences. The head of
Speaker 2: six cutting Edge Companies took his private jet to the
Speaker 2: site of a Hamas massacre just miles from an active
Speaker 2: war zone. It raises a lot of questions, what is
Speaker 2: Musk doing? Why? What is he trying to accomplish? To
Speaker 2: discuss his trip to Israel, we've brought in Marissa Newman,
Speaker 2: our Israeli tech reporter. Marissa, thanks for making time for us.
Speaker 2: We know you've been very, very busy.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: And Max Chafkin, senior reporter at Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Hey, then
Speaker 2: we'll dig into all things cyber truck with longtime Tesla
Speaker 2: reporter Dana Hull. Okay, Israel, Marissa, what was Elon mush there?
Speaker 3: So officially he was here for a solidarity visit during
Speaker 3: the war, he tore the key boots in the south
Speaker 3: on the cause of border that was the site of
Speaker 3: one of the massacres. But the context of his visit
Speaker 3: came after he was embroiled in another anti Semitism scandal
Speaker 3: when he endorsed a tweet that was anti Semitic, and
Speaker 3: the last time that he had been in a similar situation.
Speaker 3: He met Nitao Nitunio traveled to California, and this visit
Speaker 3: was also seen as sort of a way to walk
Speaker 3: himself out of the latest scandal.
Speaker 2: Now, numbers are you during that last meeting they had
Speaker 2: in September in California? You were there, correct?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: And and what was it like then and how was
Speaker 2: that different than now?
Speaker 3: So at the time, Nitaniello said to him, you know,
Speaker 3: we hope that within the confines of the First Amendment,
Speaker 3: you'll fight anti semitism on X. And then that gave
Speaker 3: Musk sort of the platform to say, well, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm a post anti semitism, I'm post of racism in
Speaker 3: any form. And during this visit they had sort of
Speaker 3: a spaces conversation on X, and anti semitism didn't really
Speaker 3: didn't come up at all. Musk also met with the
Speaker 3: Israeli president and another cabinet member, and they brought up
Speaker 3: anti semitism, but they spoke generally about combating anti semitism X.
Speaker 3: They didn't directly confront him about his own actions. So definitely,
Speaker 3: from Nitagnell's point of view, it wasn't a focus.
Speaker 2: But now, Max, we do know that Musk has done
Speaker 2: some tweeting or xing about his most recent embrooliers.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So as as Marissa says these Net and Yahoo
Speaker 1: meetings were clearly, you know, part of an effort by
Speaker 1: Elon Musk to say, you know, how could I be
Speaker 1: an anti Semi. I'm like good friends with the you know,
Speaker 1: the leader of Israel. He has all along besides these
Speaker 1: two meetings, he's had a very kind of steady drumbeat
Speaker 1: of interviews essentially claiming that, you know, he's not an
Speaker 1: anti Semi. He went on Ben Shapiro's show, he said
Speaker 1: that he's you know, Jewish in the kind of George
Speaker 1: Santos way. He Yesterday, while this was going on, one
Speaker 1: of his fans said, you know, I hope this puts
Speaker 1: arrest to the to these you know, rumors that Elon
Speaker 1: Musk is anti Semitic, and Musk responded, yeah, I hope
Speaker 1: so too. I'm paraphrasing here, but essentially endorsed that. So
Speaker 1: he's more or less said that that was one of
Speaker 1: his goals here. I think there are real questions about
Speaker 1: whether it will achieve what he wants to achieve, because
Speaker 1: of course, you know, there's an Israeli audience and then
Speaker 1: there's a US audience, and it's a US audience of advertisers,
Speaker 1: in particular, who are you know, still concerned about extremist
Speaker 1: content on X and the possibility that their ads will
Speaker 1: show next to it.
Speaker 2: So, Marissa, how has Musk been received there in Israel?
Speaker 3: So Musk was received warmly by politicians, with the exception
Speaker 3: of the Israeli president sort of bring anti Semitism as
Speaker 3: an issue. There's been just a wave of world leaders
Speaker 3: who have been visiting Israel, and among Israelis there's a
Speaker 3: certain appreciation for those for those visits, those wartime visits.
Speaker 3: On the other hand, there definitely is a lot of
Speaker 3: criticism over both disinformation on X and conspiracy theories about
Speaker 3: the war that are that are not being curbed.
Speaker 1: I mean we should also say that, like there is
Speaker 1: this thread of Elon Musk's endorsement of an you know,
Speaker 1: anti Semitic conspiracy theory. But Elon Musk also just generally
Speaker 1: likes to throw himself into the mix when there is
Speaker 1: a big global controversy. You know, he vowed to fix
Speaker 1: the Flint water system during the water crisis. He inserted
Speaker 1: himself into the into the Tie Cave rescue. This is
Speaker 1: a guy who you know, likes to be the main
Speaker 1: character and and of course that gets him in trouble
Speaker 1: a lot of the time. But I think you know,
Speaker 1: he often does this thing which world leaders also do,
Speaker 1: which is, hey, there's a big conflict, let me put
Speaker 1: myself in this.
Speaker 2: So this is this is geopolitical elin right, the sover
Speaker 2: that the sovereign Republic of Elon Musk, all right, so rises,
Speaker 2: So what other global CEOs have shown up on in
Speaker 2: Israel and gotten this kind of tour from Benjamin Nettanna.
Speaker 3: Who none President Biden was here. He got a warm welcome.
Speaker 3: World leaders were here, but no CEOs. Obviously this is
Speaker 3: very unusual, and it's it's worth pointing out that nittaill
Speaker 3: went down south to do this.
Speaker 2: Tour with him, taking away from what is presumably fairly
Speaker 2: busy agenda.
Speaker 3: Now yeah, I mean there's a ceasefire so but definitely
Speaker 3: definitely it's the middle of the war and there are
Speaker 3: hostage exchanges every night. And Ntoniello was in the South
Speaker 3: giving Musk the tour of the key.
Speaker 2: Boots, right. So Max, that really does, though, speak again
Speaker 2: to to the power of the geopolitical Elon and and
Speaker 2: and the and the influence he wieled you once ranked
Speaker 2: him if you were a country, you said, He were
Speaker 2: barely top two hundred. That's crazy. He's totally totally top
Speaker 2: two hundred.
Speaker 1: I mean he's he's the richest person in the world.
Speaker 1: So so that gives him a certain status he operates
Speaker 1: all these companies. Also, he's got a unique willingness, a
Speaker 1: a Kardashian level appetite to be in the middle, middle
Speaker 1: of the storm. And obviously net and Yahou has something
Speaker 1: to gain Bye Bye by showcasing a relationship with Elon Musk.
Speaker 1: And so you have this kind of mutual trade which
Speaker 1: we've seen other world leaders make, you know, in the UK,
Speaker 1: you know, and elsewhere. It'll it will continue where where
Speaker 1: Elon Musk is able to command these audiences. And it's
Speaker 1: in everybody. It's in both sides interest to show that
Speaker 1: he is of this status and that they are able
Speaker 1: to attract, you know, the great the world's great industrialist
Speaker 1: as they see it, to their country. And at the
Speaker 1: same time, right there's this possibility that Starlink is going
Speaker 1: to become a government contractor, it's going to offer its
Speaker 1: its internet services to governments and and so maybe there's
Speaker 1: a dual purpose here with this visit, both in terms
Speaker 1: of potentially marketing Starlink and making contacts with the Israeli
Speaker 1: government and also trying to say like, how could I
Speaker 1: anti Semitic If I, you know, have friends. Look at
Speaker 1: my Jewish friend over here, how could I be an
Speaker 1: anti Semite?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: So, two birds with one stone now Marissa Starlink his
Speaker 2: satellite unit within SpaceX. It came up to a certain
Speaker 2: extent during this visit.
Speaker 3: It did come up early on in the war. The
Speaker 3: Israeli Communications Ministry said that they were interested in Starlink
Speaker 3: to back up Israel's communications during the war. And then
Speaker 3: a few weeks later, Musk tweeted that he would be
Speaker 3: willing to give Gaza International aid organizations in Gaza access
Speaker 3: to Starlink, which immediately infuriated the Israelis, who said that
Speaker 3: that would be exploited by Hamas. Then Musk walked it back, said,
Speaker 3: oh no, we wouldn't do that without sort of the
Speaker 3: approval of the Israeli Defense Establishment and the US Department
Speaker 3: of Defense. And then on the morning of his visit,
Speaker 3: while he was sort of in the south with Ntagne
Speaker 3: touring the key Boots, the Communications Minister said that they
Speaker 3: had reached some sort of understanding under which Israel would
Speaker 3: control Starlink in Israel and in Gaza. That doesn't seem
Speaker 3: to be a done deal Starlight. You know, no one
Speaker 3: on Musk side has confirmed that, and the Ministry is
Speaker 3: saying that it's an understanding, but it's not. It's not final,
Speaker 3: but it's definitely something that's that's coming up in the
Speaker 3: talks and as part.
Speaker 2: Of this got it, we got it. Got it. So
Speaker 2: no concrete deal yet, but max in general conflict has
Speaker 2: been very good for Starlink's business. Yes, well, and.
Speaker 1: It's been very good for SpaceX's business. I mean, people
Speaker 1: forget this, but SpaceX is a massive defense contractor and
Speaker 1: Starlink the satellite unit, which you know, we and others
Speaker 1: have reported, is you know at least considering an IPO
Speaker 1: moving towards an IPO via some kind of spin off.
Speaker 1: You know, it would be a natural way for this
Speaker 1: company to you know, get more revenue and also do
Speaker 1: a thing that Elon Musk is good at, which is
Speaker 1: you know, kind of court governments. Uh and and and
Speaker 1: convince them to give him write him very large checks.
Speaker 2: And so last thing. So he is right. Elon fancies
Speaker 2: himself this world leader, and other world leaders seem eager
Speaker 2: and keen to make time for him. Why Marissa does
Speaker 2: Benjamin and Yahoo make time for him and entertain him?
Speaker 2: And by the way, I think it was it was
Speaker 2: no small deal when they went to the to effectively,
Speaker 2: you know, a place that was just miles from an
Speaker 2: active war zone. What's in it for him?
Speaker 3: Well, originally when he went to California, it came in
Speaker 3: sort of at the height of protests in Israel's over
Speaker 3: his judicial reforms, and that was being led by the
Speaker 3: tech community, and at the time now was very keen
Speaker 3: to show that he's tech friendly, that he's sort of
Speaker 3: he cast himself as the person who built Israel's tech economy,
Speaker 3: and so that embrace with Musk at the time was
Speaker 3: sort of framed around that. And I think that's still
Speaker 3: something that he's looking for. He's you know, the Israeli
Speaker 3: government has sort of spoken about trying to get Musk
Speaker 3: to invest in AI in Israel, to sort of have
Speaker 3: a presence in Israel, and I think that's something that continued.
Speaker 3: Those talks areits are ongoing. And one of the meetings
Speaker 3: Musks had when he was here was with tech entrepreneurs,
Speaker 3: with cybersecurity officials in Israel.
Speaker 1: There's also the question of does this help Elon Musk.
Speaker 1: We should say, first of all, Musk has denied, and
Speaker 1: we've said this on other podcasts, denied that he's anti Semitic,
Speaker 1: that this isn't entirely just like a bogus media conspiracy.
Speaker 2: I think like that.
Speaker 1: It's it's unlikely that this is going to make much
Speaker 1: of a dent, either in the advertising boycott or in
Speaker 1: the like larger narrative about him.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, we're.
Speaker 1: We're seeing essentially a similar strategy to one that Donald
Speaker 1: Trump deployed right where he was. He was very close
Speaker 1: to net Yahu and also very unpopular among American Jews.
Speaker 1: And so it is not necessarily like those two things,
Speaker 1: they don't necessarily go together. It's not clear that anyone's
Speaker 1: going to buy this. It's it's a pretty weak defense
Speaker 1: of the of the bad tweet that he did. When
Speaker 1: he could, he still could just apologize, and of course
Speaker 1: he's not doing that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not it's not on brand, and he's not
Speaker 2: doing it, nor do I suspect will he listen, Marissa,
Speaker 2: thank you very much for your time.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: We'll have you on again soon. Okay, we're back and
Speaker 2: joining me and Max now is Dana Hall. Dana, welcome back.
Speaker 4: Good morning.
Speaker 2: So then when I woke up this morning, and as
Speaker 2: I always do, I went right to my Bloomberg terminal,
Speaker 2: the number one read story this morning was your story.
Speaker 2: Musk's cybertruck is already a production nightmare for Tesla. It
Speaker 2: is indeed, these things are hitting the road. What's gone
Speaker 2: so wrong? Why has it taken so long for them
Speaker 2: to get it here? And what does it look like
Speaker 2: going forward in terms of them ramping up output.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I think what's interesting to me is that,
Speaker 4: as you all may remember, Musk first unveiled this cyber
Speaker 4: truck four years ago in November of twenty nineteen, and
Speaker 4: that was the big event where, you know, it was
Speaker 4: like this huge viral event. They sort of unveiled the truck,
Speaker 4: were kind of a gast and shocked at how weird
Speaker 4: it looked. They tried to prove that the glass was shatterproof,
Speaker 4: and they threw like a mallet or a ball at it,
Speaker 4: and the glass shattered and it went viral. It was
Speaker 4: like this incredible, incredible event.
Speaker 2: Well, maybe that was a little too hard.
Speaker 4: Four years later, the night, you know, we're finally going
Speaker 4: to actually see the vehicles like handed over to the
Speaker 4: first trusted customers. It'll probably be a mix of like
Speaker 4: employees and friends of Elon, and so Tesla is having
Speaker 4: this big event on Thursday to kind of do the
Speaker 4: handover of the very first cyber trucks. And in the meantime,
Speaker 4: cyber trucks have shown up in showrooms. So I went
Speaker 4: on Sunday to go see one. I had a showroom
Speaker 4: here in the Bay Area, and you know, the cyber
Speaker 4: truck is like surrounded by ropes and everyone's like crammed
Speaker 4: in like taking selfies of it, and so it's like
Speaker 4: the vehicle exists, like you can go see them.
Speaker 2: So there was a big there's a big crowd.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, it was a big It was a big
Speaker 4: like Black Friday shopping things, a big way for Tesla
Speaker 4: to get folks into the showroom. But simultaneously, everything that
Speaker 4: Elon Musk has said about the cyber truck just like
Speaker 4: gives me the spidy sense that things are not going well.
Speaker 4: And the wonderful thing about Elon as a CEO is
Speaker 4: that he's remarkably frank, almost frank to a fault, And
Speaker 4: on the last Ernie's call, he just went on and
Speaker 4: on about how the cyber truck is going to be
Speaker 4: really hard to make. It's going to take blood, sweat
Speaker 4: and tears to get it to volume production. He went
Speaker 4: so far as to say that they dug their own grave.
Speaker 1: We dug our own grave of cer cyber trucks, every
Speaker 1: big tigs are gray better than themselves.
Speaker 2: When he does say that, when he says things like
Speaker 2: we dug our own grave, which, by the way, Max,
Speaker 2: in terms of hopping on on a call with investors
Speaker 2: and saying something like that about a product you're about
Speaker 2: to release, that's pretty unusual.
Speaker 1: No, well, I mean, I think he's trying to manage
Speaker 1: expectations because from the sort of like Tesla bowl point
Speaker 1: of view, the cyber truck has a lot of potentially
Speaker 1: You got to remember, like big picture, he Tesla has
Speaker 1: has been struggling or at least managing demand, like how
Speaker 1: much do customers really want these cars? They've sold so
Speaker 1: many model threes, And this is a car that's been
Speaker 1: on the market and model wise, the suv version of
Speaker 1: the All three, this is a car that's been on
Speaker 1: the market for a really long time. You know, there's
Speaker 1: a potential for sort of fatigue. Right, You're basically talking
Speaker 1: about a sensible, you know, smallish car. It's not the
Speaker 1: kind of thing that people get really excited about. On
Speaker 1: top of that, you have Elon Musk kind of every
Speaker 1: day going on Twitter and saying stuff that is you know,
Speaker 1: edgy or borderline you know, racist, as we discussed earlier,
Speaker 1: and so like that. These things are all, you know,
Speaker 1: arguably harming to demand for these cars. Meanwhile, you have
Speaker 1: this brand new design. It's really snazzy. It's in a
Speaker 1: category that you know, obviously moves a lot of numbers.
Speaker 1: Trucks are you know, bigger category than cars in the
Speaker 1: United States. So so this is like a huge opportunity,
Speaker 1: and I think Elon Musk has been trying diligently to
Speaker 1: get investors to understand that, Yeah, while he sees the opportunity,
Speaker 1: it's a long term opportunity, not something that's going to
Speaker 1: happen in the next year.
Speaker 2: Now, Dan, when he came up with this super unique design,
Speaker 2: I think inspired in part by one of his children,
Speaker 2: what is the profile of the buyer that he had
Speaker 2: in mind? As a truck owner myself, I do not
Speaker 2: see myself changing turning in my Chevy Colorado anytime soon
Speaker 2: for a cyber truck. Who is the buyer of this vehicle?
Speaker 4: Well, that's the big question, right. So the truck market
Speaker 4: in the United States, it's pretty formulaic. You have some
Speaker 4: big brands like the Ford F one fifty, the Chevy Silverado,
Speaker 4: and you know, trucks kind of look the same and
Speaker 4: like every new truck is basically an iteration of the
Speaker 4: very basic design with better specs, And this is like
Speaker 4: a category defining vehicle. Will the contractor who needs to
Speaker 4: like haul lumber to their job site, like drive this thing?
Speaker 4: I don't know. I mean there's a lot of questions
Speaker 4: about what is the actual Well, we don't know the
Speaker 4: specs yet, and we don't know the range, and we
Speaker 4: don't know the price, because those are sort of big
Speaker 4: unknowns that I presume we'll get on Thursday.
Speaker 2: When I think about trucks, I feel like I break
Speaker 2: them down and truck buyers into two categories. Those who
Speaker 2: buy trucks for the utility of them, and then those
Speaker 2: who buy trucks for the statement and the look. I
Speaker 2: don't I can't envision anybody who's a truck buyer who's
Speaker 2: looking for the utility of the vehicle it's hauling and
Speaker 2: so on and so forth, even though of course I
Speaker 2: know the cyber truck can do those things. Is looking
Speaker 2: to hey, let me get me, we when we plunk
Speaker 2: down X amount of dollars for that thing. To me,
Speaker 2: it's almost more like your buyer is like the buyer
Speaker 2: who bought Hummers years ago.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: The other thing to remember about the truck market is
Speaker 4: that like half of it is fleet sales, like you
Speaker 4: know at and t utility workers, you know, like PG.
Speaker 4: I mean, a lot of a lot of these, a
Speaker 4: lot of a lot of truck A lot of trucks
Speaker 4: are bought by corporate fleets, and so I don't think
Speaker 4: that the cyber truck is going to appeal to that buyer.
Speaker 4: So you've got sort of the consumer who's buying it
Speaker 4: as a lifestyle statement, you know, I mean, it will
Speaker 4: have it a certain appeal. There are definitely fanboys and
Speaker 4: Tesla fans, you know, who will buy this thing, But
Speaker 4: how many how many are we talking about?
Speaker 2: That fleet buyer is precisely to the point that fleet
Speaker 2: buyer is absolutely a utility buyer. It's it's utility of
Speaker 2: the vehicle.
Speaker 4: Right utility buyers. You know, like if a corporation wants
Speaker 4: to buy a bunch of trucks for their contractors or
Speaker 4: their workers, they tend to want to buy them in bulk.
Speaker 4: They want to make sure that the parts are there
Speaker 4: to fix them if needed. They want to have a
Speaker 4: pretty quick turnaround time in case there's any maintenance issues,
Speaker 4: Like they are not going to be plunking down to
Speaker 4: buy this vehicle in high numbers anytime soon. And I
Speaker 4: don't even think the fleet buyer is part of the
Speaker 4: equation at all. So it's consumers. Is it the La
Speaker 4: guy who wants to pretend that he's Mad Max on
Speaker 4: the freeways of southern California? Is it the Texas person?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 4: And there's all these like bells and whistles that they
Speaker 4: keep talking about like it's bulletproof or you can sling
Speaker 4: an arrow at it, Like do you need that? Like
Speaker 4: does does is that something that the that the American
Speaker 4: consumer actually needs? So it's it seems like it's it's
Speaker 4: you know, they're they're obsessing about these things that like
Speaker 4: I wasn't really aware that the average American truck buyer
Speaker 4: was crying out for a bulletproof vehicle. Like maybe maybe
Speaker 4: I'm maybe I'm an optimist about the state of the world,
Speaker 4: But yeah, who who buys this is a very interesting question.
Speaker 4: There will be buyers, no question, but I think it's
Speaker 4: gonna be pretty niche just like the Model X.
Speaker 1: If you're reading tat turn and you're watching those SpaceX launches,
Speaker 1: you are going to buy a cyber truck. But but
Speaker 1: the truth is that is a narrow constituency. The big
Speaker 1: constituency are these kind of sensible car buyers, and that
Speaker 1: is a group he is not speaking to right now.
Speaker 2: I have another question for you, Dan and your piece today,
Speaker 2: does indeed get at this a lot? Let's pretend indeed
Speaker 2: that demand for these vehicles is booming. And by the way,
Speaker 2: demand for vehic for EV's in general, including some EV
Speaker 2: trucks from Ford and Chevy's, kind of seems a little spotty.
Speaker 2: But let's pretend it does boom. Can they ramp and
Speaker 2: scale up output as needed to meet that demand?
Speaker 4: Well, that's what he's warned is going to be very
Speaker 4: very slow. And I think that when Elon Musk says
Speaker 4: something's going to be hard, like listen to him, Like
Speaker 4: this guy has done this before. And what's fascinating is
Speaker 4: that it's like it's almost like they're repeating the same
Speaker 4: mistake that they made with the Model X. They've they've
Speaker 4: sort of fell on their sword and finally emitted the
Speaker 4: Model X, you know, had too much new technology that
Speaker 4: it was a victim of Tesla's own hubris. And now
Speaker 4: here he is like audit earnings calls. Heelling investor is
Speaker 4: very clearly like, we're about to go through production hell
Speaker 4: all over again. We dug our own grave. This is
Speaker 4: a unique complex vehicle. It's going to take eighteen months
Speaker 4: till we get anywhere close to volume production. So you know,
Speaker 4: I think it'll be very interesting to see who gets
Speaker 4: these first vehicles on Thursday at the big handover event.
Speaker 4: And then when Tesla reports sales in quarterly sales in January,
Speaker 4: like how many cyber do they deliver in the fourth quarter?
Speaker 4: Is it ten?
Speaker 2: Oh, it's going to be very like ten?
Speaker 3: Is it fifteen?
Speaker 4: And you know, eventually they will get there. But it's
Speaker 4: not just the steel. It's like all these new things,
Speaker 4: like they're using their in house battery cells, it's eight
Speaker 4: hundred volt architecture, there's like an oval seering wheel, there's
Speaker 4: like you know, dynamic suspension. I mean, there's a lot
Speaker 4: of like cool things that I think are cool, but
Speaker 4: like in aggregate to make sure that all those things
Speaker 4: cool things are working. It's just like a lot of
Speaker 4: little engineering issues that are going to continue to crop
Speaker 4: up until they smooth it out. And I mean that's
Speaker 4: what happens whenever you launch a new vehicle. It's just
Speaker 4: surprising to me that at this stage and the company's development,
Speaker 4: that they've chosen to go with the vehicle that seems
Speaker 4: to just be saddled with so many things that could
Speaker 4: go wrong.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's funny because one thing we should remember
Speaker 2: is that in the Isaacson book on Musk, it came
Speaker 2: out Dana right that designers at Tessel were so freaked
Speaker 2: out by this design and so unnerved by the design
Speaker 2: that they were secretly plotting to build and design their
Speaker 2: own truck. Right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was that was a big chapter in the
Speaker 4: Isaacson book. And it's it's hard not to look at
Speaker 4: this and think, Okay, this had like a focus group
Speaker 4: of one and that one person happens to be ahead
Speaker 4: of the company, like and I would love to know,
Speaker 4: like Tesla engineers if you're listening, like, did you focus
Speaker 4: group this with like tech with truck buyers in Michigan
Speaker 4: and Ohio and Texas.
Speaker 2: Like he never must never does he never does focus groups, right.
Speaker 4: Not usually. So if this seems like one of those
Speaker 4: things where like Elon, Elon sort of he gets obsessive
Speaker 4: about certain details, Like with the Model X, he was
Speaker 4: he had to have these Falcon wing doors and like
Speaker 4: every engineer at the company was like, oh my god,
Speaker 4: these doors are such a pain in the ass, but
Speaker 4: like Elon was insistent on them. It seems like with
Speaker 4: the cyber truck, he's like insisting on certain elements and
Speaker 4: you know, I don't know what the design discussions were
Speaker 4: like those doors.
Speaker 1: For I gotta just remind everybody that car, the X
Speaker 1: that Dana has been talking about, it was supposed to
Speaker 1: be the Sensible, it was supposed to be the minivan,
Speaker 1: Tesla's minivan. It's a big, it's a three row kind
Speaker 1: of hybrid suv. You know, it's for families. It was
Speaker 1: the family car, and they designed these crazy doors that
Speaker 1: like literally only appeal to like a very narrow subset
Speaker 1: of childless man, right, Like you have to be like
Speaker 1: like very versed in the you know, automotive details of
Speaker 1: sports cars and like back to the future for this
Speaker 1: to make sense, and we're kind of seeing the same
Speaker 1: thing all over again. And the crazy thing is, Dana
Speaker 1: points out, is must just acknowledge this. He's talked about
Speaker 1: how this was a mistake. These were not things that
Speaker 1: people actually wanted. It was a mistake to sell you know,
Speaker 1: basically moms and dads on these psychotic wars.
Speaker 2: It didn't didn't work that well.
Speaker 4: Just look at the chart that's at our story today.
Speaker 4: It took them so long to ramp the X, and
Speaker 4: then the X has never been a big seller. Now
Speaker 4: the Model Why is this huge hit, But the Model
Speaker 4: Why is like does not have those crazy doors and
Speaker 4: the why is awesome, Like whenever I rent a Tesla
Speaker 4: from Hurtz, I always rent a Model Y. I think
Speaker 4: it's a fantastic car, but it's like simple and so
Speaker 4: like why, Like if you're going to make a truck,
Speaker 4: if you're going to enter the highly competitive truck market, like, okay,
Speaker 4: you want it to look like a blade Runner thing, fine,
Speaker 4: but like why adding all the bells and whistles like
Speaker 4: Musk called it like an insane. I think he called
Speaker 4: it an insane technology bandwagon, Like why complicate it for yourself?
Speaker 4: Like why make it harder?
Speaker 2: Because he loves the challenge, I suppose to a certain degree.
Speaker 2: Let me ask you this as we wrap up here
Speaker 2: on the cyber truck. If it were to fail Dana
Speaker 2: Hall and be a bust and a flop either because
Speaker 2: the demand's not there because they can't scale it, how
Speaker 2: big a deal is it to Tesla and to Tesla's
Speaker 2: stock price?
Speaker 4: That's a good that's a good question. I think that
Speaker 4: investors tend to be pretty forgiving of Tesla, and I
Speaker 4: think that Musk has really tempered expectations for this vehicle
Speaker 4: by going on and on the way he did on
Speaker 4: the call. So I don't know what part of the
Speaker 4: valuation of the company right now is resting on this vehicle.
Speaker 4: I don't think it's a lot.
Speaker 1: We should probably try to just like imagine how this
Speaker 1: could work out, just just because you never know. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: maybe it turns out that some of these things that
Speaker 1: are so difficult to manufacture actually do have a lot
Speaker 1: of utility. You could imagine, right, fleets do care about
Speaker 1: paying for gas? You know, maybe a lot of these
Speaker 1: trips are short. Maybe there are ways that this is
Speaker 1: more practical than we're anticipating. And also maybe you know,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of hummers sold in the in
Speaker 1: the ninety tons, and maybe this does capture the imagination
Speaker 1: in a way that you know, becomes a cultural icon.
Speaker 1: But then you're back to this problem of Okay, well
Speaker 1: now you have to manufacture them.
Speaker 2: You got to if you gotta make them. Yeah, my
Speaker 2: whole thing Just just to be clear on the utility,
Speaker 2: it's not that the cyber truck doesn't have utility. It's
Speaker 2: like I've had friends who've tried to get me convinced
Speaker 2: me to buy didn't Jeep come out with some sort
Speaker 2: of gladiator the gladiator? And my point to them was
Speaker 2: very simply, I'm not going to pay the premium for
Speaker 2: the look in the statement, right, like there's a whole
Speaker 2: like hipster value to it that No, I just want
Speaker 2: the util the truck. And so you know that what
Speaker 2: does this cyber truck even Max you're entertaining.
Speaker 1: You're you're I was wondering when you brought up the
Speaker 1: question of who are the real truck guys versus posers?
Speaker 1: Which category you were in I'm glad to know clearly.
Speaker 2: I'm a real truck. But what what is the price?
Speaker 4: I mean, that's the other thing that's bananas. We don't
Speaker 4: know the price, We don't know the battery range, we
Speaker 4: don't have any real specs in terms of just like
Speaker 4: a lot of things.
Speaker 2: Okay, so listen, find a little bonus segment here. As
Speaker 2: these cyber trucks are released into the wild, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: ask you, guys, who, among us, including our good friend
Speaker 2: Sarah Fryar, is most likely to first hop behind the wheel? Max.
Speaker 1: I think it's me, unfortunately, just because I think I'm
Speaker 1: the only one who's willing to admit that I sometimes
Speaker 1: think about pickup trucks, and not for utility. Reason is
Speaker 1: because I think they're cool.
Speaker 2: You want to be cool, you want to be a badass.
Speaker 1: I want to be a cool man with a pickup
Speaker 1: truck cigar in your mouth. And this is probably a
Speaker 1: thing that Odyssey drivers, you know, just go through.
Speaker 2: Uh mine's the twenty nineteen. Probably when you.
Speaker 1: Get to your third or fourth year with the Odyssey,
Speaker 1: you start to think about pickup trucks.
Speaker 2: And that's me right now, you got young kids, you
Speaker 2: still embrace that all right, Dana. If it's not Max,
Speaker 2: who is it? Or do you too say Max?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I could see Max. I could see Max going
Speaker 4: for it. You know, it fits his brand, Mad Max
Speaker 4: gets the cyber truck. I could see him doing a story.
Speaker 4: He's going to drive across the country in it, you know,
Speaker 4: maybe take the kids slits of national parks. I could
Speaker 4: see it.
Speaker 2: I would also say Max as well, because yeah, because
Speaker 2: he's he's just got that, he's got that desire to
Speaker 2: be cool. Well, I I out in myself as not
Speaker 2: a real truck guy. Also, this is correct and and
Speaker 2: so you know, but that is, if there are enough
Speaker 2: Max Chapkins out there in the United States of America,
Speaker 2: this thing is going to be an enormous thing, isn't it.
Speaker 4: What's what's that old like stereotype about men having their
Speaker 4: midlife crisis and they buy is it a is it
Speaker 4: a Maserati or a Ferrari? Maybe this is the new
Speaker 4: Maybe this is the new midlife crisis car for a
Speaker 4: certain kind of man.
Speaker 2: All right, thanks for listening to Elon Inc. And thanks
Speaker 2: to our muscologists, Dana. Max. Great to be here, Always
Speaker 2: a pleasure. This episode was produced by Stacy Wan, Naomi
Speaker 2: Shaven and Rayhan Harmansi are our senior editors. The idea
Speaker 2: for this very show also came from Rayhan. Blake Maples
Speaker 2: handles engineering, and we get special editing assistants from Jeff Grocott.
Speaker 2: Our supervising producer is Magnus Henrickson, thanks a bunch of
Speaker 2: BusinessWeek editor Joel Weber. The Elon Inc. Theme is written
Speaker 2: and performed by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugiura. Sage Bauman
Speaker 2: is the head of Bloomberg Podcast and our executive producer.
Speaker 2: If you have a minute, rate and review our show,
Speaker 2: it'll help other listeners find us. I am David Papadopolis.
Speaker 2: See you next week.