Interview mit Bloomberg 25. Februar 2013 Musk erklärt Betty Liu von Bloomberg, dass die Model-S-Kritik der New York Times Tesla wahrscheinlich Hunderte von Bestellungen und einen Wert von Dutzenden Millionen gekostet hat.
Musk erklärt Betty Liu von Bloomberg, dass die Model-S-Kritik der New York Times Tesla wahrscheinlich Hunderte von Bestellungen und einen Wert von Dutzenden Millionen gekostet hat.
Transkript Elon Musk
The thing that really I thought was wrong was we're looking at the data from this test drive, and it doesn't correlate at all to the article that was written. And the result was that the car ran out of range.
Bloomberg Interviewer
It had to be towed.
Elon Musk
Yeah, exactly. And so there was this sad shot of our car on a flatbed as though that was the only outcome possible for such a drive. And that's just not true unless people said, oh, it doesn't matter if you're right or wrong. You don't battle the New York Times like, the hell with that. I'd rather tell the truth and suffer the consequences, even if they're negative. I don't think it should be the end of his career. I don't even think necessarily should be fired. But I do think he fudged an article.
Bloomberg Interviewer
But what did you hear in the middle of all of this?
Elon Musk
Well, we did actually get a lot of cancellations as a result of the New York Times article. So it wasn't. It probably affected us to the tune of tens of millions, if not maybe on the order of 100 million. So it's not trivial. 100 million, probably something on that order. Yeah.
Bloomberg Interviewer
So we're talking about probably a thousand cancellations based on this.
Elon Musk
No, sorry, it says of 100 million. I'd say that that refers more to the valuation of the company.
Bloomberg Interviewer
I see. You're not talking about orders.
Bloomberg Interviewer
Orders. But you're not talking about the amount of the orders equals 100.
Elon Musk
No, it wasn't as though there were a thousand cancellations just due to the New York Times article, though there were probably a few hundred.
Bloomberg Interviewer
Now, Elon, you and I have talked a lot about production targets. So you're pretty much at 400 cars per week. Right. For the. For the Model S. And you are going to hit. It seems like you're going to hit thousand for this year. Now, some might say, okay, you're going to hit 20,000 this year, but what about next year and the year after that? Perhaps the 20,000 are just the early adopters, and that's where the demand's coming from.
Elon Musk
Well, in terms of model is demand, we've seen more new reservations every successive quarter. So the demand appears to be growing, if one is to extrapolate that trend. And we're also seeing that when a Model S is. When a lot of Model S are delivered to a particular area of the country, we actually get increased reservations. So if it were just the early adopters, what you'd see is that when you deliver Model S's to a particular region of the country, that sales decline dramatically because you've satisfied the early adopters. But actually we see the opposite. We actually see increased sales. The more Model S's are delivered to a particular area, which means that the word of mouth is very positive. For every customer's car that we deliver, we seem to sell an incremental two or three cars as a function of that customer. On average, some customers has been like 20 cars.
Bloomberg Interviewer
Now, I know in the fourth quarter you had issue. You, you reported a loss in the fourth quarter and part of that had to do with the increase in expenses. I think was up 29% to $115 million. You also though, promise for the coming year that you're going to boost production. You're going to, as I mentioned, you're going to hit 500 cars per week. So how are you going to get costs down and boost production?
Elon Musk
The big challenge in the fourth quarter was going from low production rate to that 20,000 unit a year production rate, which is really difficult because, I mean, that's basically over 400 cars a week. In the past with the Roadster, we only made 600 cars a year. So we have to manufacture and deliver and service as many cars almost in a week as we did in a year. So that took, you know, that's a steep learning curve. Yeah. And no question we made some mistakes along the way and it's not optimal. I don't know what more we could have have done, but there's no question we weren't perfect there.
Bloomberg Interviewer
Elon, do you think you'd have the same amount of demand for your cars without the government subsidy?
Elon Musk
$7500? No, I think, I think would be a little, little less demand. I mean, there'd probably be, I don't know, 10 to 20% less demand. So.
Bloomberg Interviewer
And you mentioned in your shareholder letter, because you have this loan from the Department of Energy that helps you with Tesla. You mentioned that eventually you want to be able to get rid of essentially this government help and be a standalone business, a standalone commercial enterprise. When will that happen?
Elon Musk
We have actually been paying off interest and principal on the loan on time. And one thing that was sort of, I think, not quite reported in some of the media last year was it sounded like at one point that Tesla was trying to delay the repayment loan or something. Actually, nothing could be further from the truth. We've always paid the loan off either on time or ahead of time. So we've got, I think about 10 years. We want to pay it off. And in five, five years or less.
Bloomberg Interviewer
Are you learning more, though, about how to deal with Washington?
Elon Musk
First of all, I'd say my overall impression of Washington is that it's much less corrupt than people think it is. And thank goodness for it, because if it was corrupt, we'd be screwed. That's not to say that there isn't some amount of that that goes on. There actually are, I think a preponderance of the leading House members and senators actually are quite idealistic and do care about doing the right thing.
Bloomberg Interviewer
Elon, I was looking through a recent article, it's actually Huffington Post article, where it seemed to portray you as kind of a peculiarity in Washington. People don't really know who is this billionaire entrepreneur who's come in and and developed the electric car market. He's got this private spaceship company. One aide for Congressman Tom delay said you showed up to a meeting with a congressman in a tight black T shirt.
Elon Musk
I don't remember doing that, by the way. I don't think that's accurate. When I'm in DC, I always wear a suit and a tie. So I believe that is an inaccurate statement.
Bloomberg Interviewer
Why do you think people have that reaction to you?
Elon Musk
I don't think that's what Most people in D.C. think of me. And I've been. I've literally made maybe 200 trips to D.C. and I've met with probably at this point, half the Senate, maybe 150plus members in the House. And they haven't just seen me once, they've seen me several times. Yeah, exactly.
Bloomberg Interviewer
And all the interactions have been like what?
Elon Musk
They've been quite positive, actually. And I mean, contrary to the sentiment of that article. I mean, I believe in being quite respectful in D.C. and I always wear a suit and a tie, even though I don't wear 1 at SpaceX.