Fast company logo
|
advertisement

PREMIUM

Elon Musk and Tesla are impossible to root for, but we’re doing it anyway

It would help if Musk abandoned his efforts to become a Silicon Valley-style monopoly.

Elon Musk and Tesla are impossible to root for, but we’re doing it anyway

[Illustration: Nigel Buchanan]

BY Ainsley Harris7 minute read

Yo Elon, you okay? Asking for a friend. I think you know her: the planet.

Over the past year, Tesla cofounder and CEO Elon Musk’s leadership has been as erratic as his company’s performance. He announced that Tesla would close its stores, only to reverse that decision less than two weeks later. He promised for almost a year that the “Enhanced Summon” feature, which would allow drivers to have their Tesla pick them up curbside, was imminent, only to acknowledge at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in June that “there’s a lot of complexity in parking lots.” Perhaps most important, after months of stressing that Tesla must become profitable as a matter of “life or death,” Musk changed his stance yet again, saying that growth is paramount and profitability can wait.

This backtracking, along with a disastrous first quarter in which Tesla lost $702 million, helps explain both the record number of short sellers betting against the company as well as its stock shedding almost $30 billion in market cap over six months.

Musk’s behavior is more than just fodder for CNBC hot takes. It’s a calamity in the making for anyone who cares about weaning the $5.1 trillion global transportation industry from its potentially catastrophic dependence on fossil fuels. When Tesla first started selling cars, 11 years ago, no one knew if people would ever feel anything more than a dutiful attraction to electric vehicles. Since then, Musk has sold more than 500,000 cars and established the next direction of the entire industry. GM, Volkswagen, Hyundai, and hundreds of startups in China have followed Musk’s lead and developed electric-car options that customers covet. When VW opened up presales in the spring for its ID.3 and Porsche Taycan EVs, they quickly generated a Tesla-like response, garnering 20,000 reservations apiece. If every vehicle purchased in the U.S. this year were electric, the environmental impact would be the equivalent of Washington, D.C., becoming carbon-neutral overnight.

advertisement

Recognize your company's culture of innovation by applying to this year's Best Workplaces for Innovators Awards before the final deadline, April 5.

ModernCEO Newsletter logo
A refreshed look at leadership from the desk of CEO and chief content officer Stephanie Mehta
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Privacy Policy

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ainsley Harris is a senior writer at Fast Company. She has written about technology, innovation, and finance for the past 10 years, including four cover stories More


Explore Topics