May 13, 2025 • 35 mins
In this week’s episode of Elon, Inc., host Max Chafkin and Bloomberg Elon Musk reporter Dana Hull sit down with Matthew LaBrot, a former Tesla sales manager who made headlines last week following his departure from the company. LaBrot was the man behind the “Tesla Employees Against Elon” website, which consisted of an open letter from an initially anonymous LaBrot criticizing the company’s multibillionaire CEO. He suggested Tesla would be better off continuing its mission without the South Africa native, his antics and the headlines that follow in his wake. Despite recent reports of the company board also having second thoughts about Musk’s performance as CEO, the company seemingly didn’t agree, and took swift action.
On the podcast, LaBrot outlines why he decided to write the letter, how he came to part ways with the company and how Tesla employees handle, or willfully ignore, “the elephant in the room.” As a former sales manager, LaBrot also spells out the internal struggles of the company as sales started plummeting in tandem with Musk’s far-right turn and association with President Donald Trump.
Hull and Chafkin also go through a list of additional Musk news from the week. These include a spat with Bill Gates, some good news for the Boring company and the latest example of cross-pollination in the Musk empire: Tesla hardware powering xAI’s supercomputer.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Let me tell you we have a new star.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
A star is born Elon mars Juson Kennemy.
Speaker 4 (00:14):
He is the Thomas Edison plus plus plus of our age.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
I feel for the guy. I would say ninety eight
percent really appreciate what he does.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
But those two percent that are nasty, they are I'll
pay in full post.
Speaker 5 (00:30):
We are meant for great things in the United States
of America, and Elon reminds.
Speaker 6 (00:34):
Us of that we don't have a fourth branch of
governments called Elon Musk.
Speaker 5 (00:46):
Welcome to Elon Ink, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
It's Tuesday, May thirteenth.
Speaker 5 (00:51):
I'm Max Chafkin, and I'm sitting here with Bloomberg's Elon
Musk reporter Dana Hall.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Hey, Dana, Hey, Max. All right, so today's show's going
to be a little different.
Speaker 5 (01:01):
You and I have an interview with Matt Lebrot, who
is a former manager in Tesla's sales operation who made
quite the splash last week. Dana, can you just give
us a sense of what happened, why we're talking to Matt.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
Yeah, so Matt is kind of it's kind of a
crazy story. In late April, he posted an anonymous letter
Tesla employees against Elon in which he basically said that
it was time to say the quiet part out loud
and talked a lot about the brand destruction because of
Elon's behavior. Two days later, he was fired, and now
(01:35):
he has kind of gone wide. Business Insider did a
profile of him, he has posted on LinkedIn, and he
has a really interesting story to tell. I mean, is
it is rare for someone who worked for Tesla for
as long as he did to kind of go so
publicly against the CEO of the company.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (01:51):
And this letter, which was originally posted on website Matt
made Tesla employees against Elon dot Com.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
It's gone everywhere.
Speaker 5 (02:00):
And I'm really excited about this conversation because we've been
talking really for months about the potential brand damage that
Elon Musk's you know, political activities have caused, and Matt,
I think has a unique perspective. We're gonna hear new things,
things that I think are going to be somewhat revelatory
for listeners in that conversation. But before we get there,
(02:20):
Dana We got to run through some of the Elon
Musk news this week because there's a lot going on.
As we pod on Tuesday morning, He's in Saudi Arabia.
Remember our friend of Pod, Kurt Wagner, predicted a boy's trip.
It appears that the boy's trip it's on.
Speaker 4 (02:36):
It's on, and I believe that Sam Malton is on
this trip as well, So it's kind of like a
strange bedfellows trip in the in the Saudi Arabian desert.
I have not been able to keep up with what
exactly Elon is saying, but I saw something cross the
transom about Optimists possibly being displayed or like a demo
of Optimists to Trump and NBS. So the other thing
(02:57):
worth noting is that this is Elon Musk's for trip
abroad since inauguration, So you know, he's going on this
kind of tour of the Middle East with Trump, the
first time he's kind of stepped away from the US
since an inauguration.
Speaker 5 (03:10):
Well, an optimist would make a certain sense. I mean,
it seems like part of the reason for Elon Musk
doing this beyond just getting to hang out with with
his pals and perhaps you know, squashed the beat with
Sam Altman is money because you know Xai is trying
to raise money. MBS, of course is good for it.
He is a is a major tech investor, and there
(03:31):
have been a lot of Saudi backed investments in Ai.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Let's go all the way back to April.
Speaker 5 (03:37):
Twenty second, the Tesla earnings call Dana, because there's a moment.
We didn't touch on this, I think at all in
our earning conversation. But there was a little good news
in that call.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
And let's let's first listen to the clip.
Speaker 6 (03:49):
Let's he was respected energy. The energy business is doing
very well. The Mega pack is that nables Tony companies
to output far more total energy then would otherwise.
Speaker 5 (04:00):
Good case the Mega Pack now that we we learned
during the earnings call that the sales are are up.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
You've been talking about this as long as I can.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
I love I love the I love the Mega Pack
as a product.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
I know everyone is like, oh god, Dana and her
Mega packs, but the Mega pack is cool, Like we.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Can you explain what it is before.
Speaker 5 (04:19):
I'm all for the love letter, but first let's like
give us a little context and try to if you
wouldn't mind, like just translating what Elon Musk just said into.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
Sure, I mean, frankly kind of looks like a big,
big refrigerator or like a steel box. But it's basically
you know, so, Tesla has two business units. There's the
car division and there's Energy. And the Energy division includes
you know, the solar roof, the power wall, which is
like the home battery that you put in your house
in case there's like a hurricane or a power outage
(04:49):
or whatever. And then there's the Mega pack, which is
Tesla's utility scale offering to utilities, and these things are
huge and banks of them are installed all over the
world North America, Europe, Australia, and they really are like
keyed to helping renewables come on to the grid. So,
you know, the sun doesn't always shine, it's not always windy,
(05:10):
but if you want to be able to store energy
and then be able to dispatch it back to the
grid during peak demand times, storage is key. And there
are a lot of big players in the energy storage
market and Tesla is one of them. But as I
reported recently, what was missing from that Ernie's call was
the fact that one of the big customers of the
Megapack is Xai, Elon's Ai company, and so Xai has
(05:34):
this supercomputer called Colossus good name, yeah, good name, big
data center in Memphis, Tennessee. That's gotten under a lot
of fire from environmental and racial justice groups because at
the moment they were using like gas fired generators to
kind of keep this plant up and running.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
And now what's happening.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
Is they are adding megapacks to this installation, which is
more energy efficient, and then they can kind of get
rid of the gas generators. But it's just another example
of you know, all of Elon's companies overlap, and one
company sells a product to another. And this was the
first time that I had seen, you know, in a filing,
like any notice of Xai buying megapas as a customer
(06:15):
to the tude of like two hundred and thirty million
dollars worth.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
How much of the total megapax sales is that? I mean?
Speaker 5 (06:22):
Is this like, is is the whole megapac thing basically
like a sham? It's just Elon musk moving money from
one company to another.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
No, because they actually do sell megapacks to a lot
of utilities around the world, like Pgene Southern California Edison.
I mean, they have a robust pipeline of sales.
Speaker 5 (06:37):
Okay, let's move on to the next story that I
wanted to bring up, which is the news uh in
the New York Times that the Federal Railroad Administration, this
is the part of the government that handles the nation's
rail infrastructure, is meeting with the boring company, Elon Musk's
tunneling venture about a possible bl eight point five billion
(07:02):
dollar tunnel. You know, Dan, I was interested in this
because there's been this narrative of Elon Musk kind of
withdrawing from Washington.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
He's back to his companies.
Speaker 5 (07:13):
Right and and I think there there may be some
truth to that, but as we've discussed, he's obviously still
spending a lot of time with Donald Trump. I mean,
they're in Saudi Arabia right now. But also I think
the next phase of this, as we as maybe doge
becomes less in the sort of center of the news
and and they're less focused on cutting or whatever, is
(07:33):
that they're gonna be contracts and this, and that Elon
Musk is going to be trying to get talk the
US government out of billions and billions of dollars, and
this Boring Company thing is is probably just you know,
the first of several of reports like this that we're
gonna hear.
Speaker 4 (07:49):
Yeah, it's interesting because of all of the companies at
Elon's empire, the Boring Company is like the least successful company.
I think that's bareness.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
To say that.
Speaker 5 (07:58):
The two or three or four, I'm not sure how
many miles of tunnels in Las Vegas that you can
drive a car through are not an impressive monument to
you know, technological innovation.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
You've been to the one in Las Vegas.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
I have not, But I mean of all of the
companies like the Boring Company, to me, I always thought
that the whole conceit of boring was let's figure out
how to perfect tunneling so that we can eventually like
settle Mars, where you're gonna need tunnels because there's no atmosphere.
And there's been a lot of news reports about boring,
like bidding or talking about building tunnels and all kinds
of crazy places, But the Las Vegas one is the
(08:33):
only one that actually exists that I'm aware of.
Speaker 5 (08:38):
I've done a lot of reporting on the Boring Company,
and I think you're probably right that there's some truth
and like in the back of Elon Musk's mind, yeah, sure,
mars whatever. But like, really the genesis the Boring Company was,
I want to get some infrastructure contracts out of Donald Trump.
And the Boring Company was founded, you know, just at
the beginning of the Trump administration, back when Steve Bannon
(08:59):
was talking about you know, infrastructure and so on, and
it was at the time, like as I understood it,
I mean, like a pretty transparent play to kind of
get in on that. Of course, Elon Musk is really
good at that. He's good at figuring out sort of
next generation solutions to problems that the government has, such
as rocket launches. But as you say, like the the
(09:21):
track record.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Isn't great, I mean we're not.
Speaker 5 (09:23):
We're talking about you can go from the Westgate in
Las Vegas to the Convention Center. That's that's a trip
you can also make on foot, but of course you
can get in a tunnel. And this would be on
like a whole other level if they if they were
to win this contract.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
Amtrak has been a target of the Trump administration for
quite a while. I mean, Musk has also taken put
shots at Amtrak. I think all of us who take
Amtrak could agree that, like, there are some inefficiencies in
the system, but it's not clear to me this you
know what exactly this contract would be for and and
they don't actually have it. And there it sounds like
they're talking to a lot of potential vendors.
Speaker 5 (09:57):
Yeah, this sounds like a very preliminary conversation. I will say, also,
there will be conversations about conflict of interest. Steve Davis,
who I think has been described Dana, Am I right,
COO of Doze or does he is also.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
COO of the boring company?
Speaker 5 (10:11):
So you're gonna have conversations about is this a conflict
of interest? Particularly you have Doge in the Department of Transportation. Meanwhile,
Doge is also sort of or somebody involved with Dose
is also potentially benefiting financially. That'll be something I think
for us to keep an eye on. All Right, last
thing here, Dana, and this will feed into the next conversation.
(10:34):
But Bill Gates has been on sort of a media tour.
He's making the decisions about his philanthropy. I guess he's
The plan is for him to give away all of
the philanthropy's money over the next twenty years, and in
the course of interviews about this, he's made a bunch
of comments about Elon Musk, and during an interview with
The Financial Times, he said that that Musks cuts to
(10:58):
USAID DOZES cuts USIID will lead to millions of deaths
and said the picture of the world's richest man killing
the world's poorest children is not a pretty one. He
brought up specifically Musk's comments about Doze cutting funding for
HIV prevention in Mozambique. Remember this was the These are
(11:19):
the cuts that Musk described as condoms to Gaza, falsely
because there is a province in Mozambique also called Gaza.
Turns out this funding was for HIV prevention. Gates is
saying that it's going to kill children. And we've talked
about brand damage a lot, but something about this, something
about Gates. This like very successful capitalist accusing Elon Musk
(11:42):
of being responsible for millions of deaths of children, Like
it just it feels significant.
Speaker 4 (11:48):
Yeah, and a successful billionaire whose own foundation has done
an enormous amount of work in the field of public
health and vaccines around the world. Right, So, I mean
the Gates Foundation is one of the big funders of
like global health and so to have Gates come out
and say this at a time when Gate is kind
of like exiting the stage and winding, you know, like
(12:10):
sort of signaling that like his philanthropy is going to
end the next stage to see ages, it's like a
parting shot to the world that like, you know, all
of these cuts are Elon's fault. And I think the
fact that Elon sort of gleefully posted on x that
he had spent the weekend feeding USA ed into the
wood shipperd he sort of goes hand in hand. I mean,
Elon himself very much acknowledged that Doge was was key
(12:33):
with that whole operation, and you're really seeing the fallout
now around the world.
Speaker 5 (12:38):
I want to say, for the record, Elon dismissed Gates
as a quote huge liar. The two have a long
history of beef. Dan I believe Gates sold some Tesla.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
Stock at some point and was sure there was there
was a theory that he was shortening Tesla stock.
Speaker 5 (12:53):
At some point Elon tweeted a me meme about Gates.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
So there's been a lot of a lot of back
and forth.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
It's one of the original feuds right, well.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Yeah, exactly, Okay, Dana.
Speaker 5 (13:09):
I am so happy that we have Matt Lebrot here,
the author of this letter about Tesla and Elon Musk,
longtime Tesla employee, Matt joining us from the Bay Area.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Thank you for being here.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
Absolutely happy to be here. Thank you so much.
Speaker 6 (13:25):
So.
Speaker 5 (13:25):
You worked at Tesla for I believe almost six years.
Tell us, just to create some context, what were you
doing at the company?
Speaker 2 (13:33):
What was your role there?
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Sure? Absolutely. I started in the field in southern California
as an assistant manager they call them customer experience managers
back then, and then was promoted to general manager of
another sales and delivery location in the Bay Area. That's
when I moved up here to Colma, South San Francisco area,
and then from there transitioned into some corporate roles where
I supported the least return team and then eventually made
(13:57):
my way over to customer education and internal training for
our sales and delivery teams. So when I left or
got asked to leave, however, we want to phrase that.
You know, my most recent role, I was creating sales
and delivery content for North America for the twenty five
hundred ish leaders and sales and delivery associates.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
So to back up for a second for people who
might not be aware of the sequence of events. I
got this anonymous letter in my inbox Tesla employees against Elon.
Tesla is ready to move forward. And the letter is
extraordinary and it says our products are not the problem,
our engineering, service and delivery teams are not the problem.
The problem is demand. The problem is Elon. And so
(14:42):
I get this letter and I'm like, oh my god,
who wrote this? And I started emailing with Matt, who
was anonymous at the time, and I was like, do
you work in sales? Like when can we meet? And like,
because we have very high barber publication at Bloomberg, I
couldn't write about it until I could verify his employment,
and like, so this letter comes out. I think every
journalist who covers Tesla was probably like dming you and
(15:05):
trying to meet with you. You ultimately talked to Business Insider,
but you got fired, Like two days later. Do you
want to talk about the sequence? Like the letter goes.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Up, start with why you wrote the letter in the
first place.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Sure, First of all, I was the only person to
write and publish the letter. There were no other employees
that were fully aware of me doing that. However, the letter,
you know, I appreciate the feedback I've gotten for it
being a well written letter. It's not all my ideas.
This is a compilation of conversations that I've had with
countless employees across North America over the last six months.
(15:41):
So that's where all of this information, and you know,
the idea really came from. And after increasing frustrations month
over month and you know, expecting Tesla to make some moves.
You know, we can of course go into deep about
the timeline of frustrations, but you know, really, once I
decided it was time to publish this, I did everything
(16:04):
I could to stay anonymous. The plan was to stay anonymous.
I am as relatively tech savvy as I think I
could be, so you know, I took these necessary steps.
I bought a new computer, I used my home Wi
Fi network to purchase the domain and build the website,
all these things that I thought I did to keep anonymous.
But within forty eight hours, I received a phone call
(16:27):
from a very polite HR associate, you know, shout out
to them, they're not the one who did this, right,
So she was very nice but you know, when she
let me know I was terminated, you know, she very
specifically said for using company resources. And again she's not
the one who did the investigation. I can't fight with
this person on it. But I very specifically didn't do that.
I took these steps appropriately to actively not do that.
(16:52):
As far as how I was found out. Again, we
can dig in more if we want, but info, Yeah,
Infosec's a big thing.
Speaker 4 (16:58):
Could you talk a little bit about the cyber truck
and and the fact that you own one and what
you did with your cyber truck as well?
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Yeah? Absolutely, Uh, you know, I did buy a cyber truck.
I will throw out there that I do not love
the way that it looks on the outside, but when
I drive it, I don't have to look at it,
and it's really great on the inside, So that sits
really well for me. My wife and I didn't even
have a ton of arguments about buying it. It was
it was kind of okay because I bought mine right
when it came out. I think by mid February I
(17:25):
had mine, and it was really through the lens of
we did need a truck. It would be pretty absurd
of me as a Tesla employee to buy a Rivian,
and I wanted to continue to support the company that
I worked for, So all those things added up to great.
Get a cyber truck. And then after I published my letter,
you know, this huge weight gets lifted. This tension that
I've been feeling about this for a long time was lifted.
(17:48):
And then the ideas start to flow, and I come
up with the idea of turning this cyber truck, which
has been communicated many times as being such a great billboard,
and it's like, great, let me billboard this thing up.
And I ran to home depot, grabbed some spray paint
and some stencils, and in my garage in the middle
of the night, spray painted this message that I wanted
(18:08):
to get across, and and that message is, you know,
pro clean energy, pro renewable resources, pro EV and pro Tesla,
all of those things can be true while still then
being anti elon. So spray painted that on the side
and I decided to park it next to the demo
drive fleet that they have in the parking structure, which
(18:30):
at least guaranteed anybody who's going to take a demo
drive they're they're gonna see this thing.
Speaker 5 (18:35):
Matt, why and maybe this this can get us into
kind of talking about what's happened as Elon has has
gotten more political, but like why that message specifically, I
mean pro EV, you know, pro clean energy, but against Elon?
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Why why against Elon?
Speaker 3 (18:51):
Yeah, the letter is not as political as the Business
Insider article you know went in that direction, but you
know the message was really the for Elon by our
primary customer base has changed and the reason for that
is a scattering and it started with him being more
active on Twitter and eventually turning into the acquisition of Twitter.
(19:14):
We started to see that transition happen. But as that
transition was happening, we were still seeing such an influx
of first time EV buyers. So, you know, twenty twenty two,
end of twenty twenty two, we're still seeing first time
EV buyers like we've never seen before. So the first
wave of people that were abandoning Tesla because of Elon
(19:35):
kind of were able to be hidden. And then that
took a huge skyrocket forward when he started to get
more political and specifically in a direction where again for
whatever reason, a lot of our customers disagree with.
Speaker 5 (19:49):
So, like your understanding of like maybe this is in
every Tesla customer, but this is a big part of
your customer base kind of like a left of center
kind of suburban type who's like interested in the environmental mission,
not necessarily like some kind of hardcore leftist, but certainly
not a Maga Republican sure, and that as Elon is
(20:14):
doing this, he is essentially alienating this huge constituency which
had been not necessarily buying all of Tesla's products, because
of course there are you know, there are other types
of customers for evs and so on, but buy a
lot of them.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
Yeah, absolutely, And everybody can fit into certain buckets, and
Tesla customers fit in multiple different buckets. And the only
one that I think that you're missing there is there
is this group that doesn't even definitely political lean a
certain direction, but they're free speech whatever your speech is,
and clean energy in whatever way it needs to be done.
So there's those folks as well. And I think that
(20:51):
again was the initial wave. Those were the people most
in tuned to what was going on on Twitter that
now x and those were the first wave.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
Internally, did like the alarm bells go off, because, like
we have argued on this show, quite a lot about
Tesla sales, and everyone would always be like, oh, the
sales are going to take a dive because Elon is
so political, And I would say, well, yes, but like
the lineup is old, and the cyber truck isn't doing well,
and like the model why really needs refresh? So like
there's multiple reasons why sales are taking a dip. You
(21:22):
can't blame it all on politics. But like walk us
through the timeline of you know, last July, muskandrses Trump October,
he campaigns with him, Trump wins the election. Like were
you getting data internally where you were like, oh, like
we're seeing a big drop off. We're seeing a big
cancel cancelation of orders.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Like as a.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
Sales guy, like you must be tracking this very closely,
like in real time day to day. Was there like
when did you realize like holy crap, like this we're
starting a creator here.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
Sure, yeah, yeah, there's there's so many different data points
that you can go off of. But also in car
sales and customer service in general, a lot of it
goes off a vibe and how the vibes of the
days are going, and you know, the customers that you're
speaking to on the phone that submitted a trade in request,
how open those people are to converse with you. You
(22:12):
start to notice some changes there, But I think it's
also worth acknowledging. You know, January twenty twenty four and
to June, those were really tough financial times. Car interest
rates very very high, so you really start to see
a slow down there that is really attributed to just
the current state. I do think it is worth calling
out the age of the why by that point as.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Well was a little bit of a factor.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
But I mean, how long has the Honda CRV looked
like the Honda CRV? Right? The majority of customers, especially
the ones that Tesla has been going after the last
few years, they don't. Those aren't the ones who care
about the most up to date thing. So by June
we're seeing promotional aprs, we're seeing interest rates, all these
things that Tesla hasn't really done before. Lease really big
(22:58):
lease focuses things like that. So you see Teslas start
to make some moves there, and then you as sales,
you kind of breathe a little bit where you're like, okay,
this is working this you know the May June where like,
all right, we sold so many model wise, life is grand.
It was just a financial issue. And then September rolls
around and Septembers where you're like, well, we're still doing
(23:22):
the same aprs. We've got FSD transfer.
Speaker 5 (23:26):
Sorry just to pause FSD transfer, meaning you're not charging
people an additional seven grand right to get this full
self driving software in their new Tesla. So it's like
effectively a seven thousand dollars price cut.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
Yeah, it is worth acknowledging that, you know. It is
kind of the way of saying, hey, we know we
didn't give you FSD for your first car, so sen
you already bought it, let's transfer it. So there's pieces
to that, but so all these levers are there to
be pulled and we're still selling cars. But what you
can acknowledge is the transition of we don't have a
backlog of customers the same way that you have before
(24:04):
for any customer who has purchased a Tesla over the years,
you know, customer service hasn't really been the biggest focus,
and well it hasn't truly been our focus, but end
result wise, it hasn't really hit the mark yet. But
what you would see is, oh, you're not ready to
take delivery of your car, no problem, We're gonna unmatch
(24:26):
it from you because it's just going to go to
the next customer in line by. But most of the
time we wouldn't respond, so that would happen. But then
when September rolls around, we have to make this push
for hey, maybe be a little nicer about this, Maybe
hold some hands through this process, and don't just rip
cars away from customers, because when you rip it away
(24:48):
from them, there isn't another customer in line waiting for
that car. And we're not talking just cyber trucks here,
we're talking model wise, the most popular car in the
world right that there is in and Tory available in
the moment for anybody.
Speaker 4 (25:08):
So what happened between June and September? Was it the endorsement?
Speaker 2 (25:11):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (25:11):
Was it that Elon endorsed Trump?
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (25:13):
And I think it's important to talk about the people
who used to come in and be like, I don't
really love what Elon's saying on Twitter. You know, whether
they're there for a service appointment or they are thinking
about getting a new car, but they're not super happy
about it. We start to have less of those conversations
because those customers just didn't come. It wasn't like we're
(25:33):
fighting with people and we're trying to overcome these objections.
It's really easy to not support a company you don't
want to support, you just don't show up. So customers,
total foot traffic is down, total demo drives, things like
that are down. You know, just and this is you
can sit outside of a location and count people coming
in right if you want, Like you see those things.
Speaker 4 (25:56):
Okay, So that's through September. So then we've got the fall,
Like the election happens, Trump wins, Musk is at inauguration.
There's the whole awkward gesture which Max and I joke
about all the time. Like you're in sales, you're on
these team calls every day, Like are people talking openly
about this or is it all like sides slack messages
(26:18):
or dms or like going out for beers after work
and be like, oh my god, what are we gonna
do with our CEO? Like how much of an awareness
was there internally that the brand issues were real?
Speaker 3 (26:28):
Yeah? Side messages on teams is the name of the game.
You're sitting on these conference calls where you're talking about
business needs, whether we're having a just a training meeting
where we're talking about what trainings we need to put out,
or full sales operations, or even North America leadership calls.
Like all of these calls, nobody is saying, hey, traffic
(26:51):
is down due to how people are feeling about the
actions of our CEO. They just say traffic is down
or whatever it may be. And then on the smaller
groups where you're like, okay, we can talk more real,
Like for these just training meetings, you're like, we can
talk real here, there is still no acknowledgment about this
giant elephant in the room. So the messages that the
(27:14):
conversations you have with peers where you're acknowledging the real
elephant in the room two on two conversations like teeny
tiny groups with your peers, but no, nothing huge. And
I even specifically, especially around this October turning point, ask
my manager at the time directly, I'm like, hey, I know,
(27:37):
I know we're fighting here. We're doing everything we can,
We're putting out the best training content we've ever put out.
But when you're in these meetings with your boss and
their boss, do you is there this acknowledgment about why traffic,
like and she just straight up tells me. She's like, no, no,
we just don't talk about it. I'm like, okay, well,
but like, doesn't that mean that we then spend time
focusing on a solve that doesn't actually reference the this
(28:00):
root cause. And she's say, eh, what ifs like it is?
Speaker 5 (28:05):
It just sounds so oppressive, especially at a company that's
like talks about itself, is grounded and thinking things through
and first, you know, all the all the kind of
I just imagine many people at Tesla just sort of
in this state of real like unease because on one hand,
like I think, and this comes up in the letter,
(28:26):
but like everyone kind of knows that Elon Musk has
done amazing things and it's hard to separate his identity
from Tesla. And then on the other hand, this kind
of like growing realization that his identity is harming Tesla,
maybe even depending on your point of view, potentially putting
(28:47):
it at in like an existential risk. It just I
just imagine that's like a pretty heavy to go through.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
Yeah, yeah, it really is. And you know, one of
the reasons that I went live with the letter is
because when you all are not hearing these bigger conversations
in bigger groups, and again maybe it's just you and
a couple of people talking about it, like you do
actually feel like this thing is happening around you and
you have no control over what's going on, and this
weight is just you know, smushing you down. But once
(29:16):
you start, once you meet a new person that is
willing to say the quiet part out loud with you,
it's just like, oh, okay, good, there's another person. And
I am known for speaking my mind, and I'll come
off of mute in some of these calls, and I'll
call a spade a spade. I'll say, hey, can we
just acknowledge that the new model, why, if it had
launched last year, would have been selling like crazy. You know,
(29:37):
these types of things where I'll come off mute, and
these groups that I'm in, these people who I've known
for a really long time, whether they're three levels higher
than me or not, I respect these people. I get
these side messages, you know, one that's like, amen, man,
thank you so much for saying that. And I'm like, oh,
this person is huge within the company, and they're teamsing
(29:58):
me on the side to say thank you for saying that,
Like they don't feel empowered to say this thing that sucks,
and these are the people that have been you know what,
We can say all of the theomenal things that Elon has done,
but we can also say that some of these people
that I'm referencing are the people who led sales and
delivery from twenty eighteen onward, where we ramped this insane
(30:24):
operation and did these incredible things at lower staffing levels
than anybody else would ever do, and things like that.
So these are the people who were there for those things,
and we're pivotal in making that happen, and they don't
feel comfortable saying anything right now.
Speaker 4 (30:41):
So now that the letter is out and your LinkedIn
post is out there, and the Business Insider piece ran, like,
what kind of feedback are you getting from other automakers,
from other salespeople, from your colleagues current and former?
Speaker 1 (30:54):
I mean, you must just be getting inundated.
Speaker 4 (30:55):
And people are like, thank you so much for speaking out,
but like, why aren't other people speaking out? Is it
just that Elon still has an iron grip on the
company even though he's not really there every day and
he's running four other companies, and as we speak, he's
in Saudi Arabia with President Trump.
Speaker 3 (31:10):
Yeah, it's been fantastic. I've gotten great emails, direct messages,
all these kind of things. But I'll also acknowledge that
there are people who have outreached where those outreaches mean
more to me. And it's one of those things if
you can acknowledge when you're in a sphere of people, again,
whether we're calling it, you know, your Blue sphere of
(31:31):
California or whatever, when you're surrounded by like minded people,
you don't expect too much pushback. But some of these
messages that I'm getting are from people across North America
that maybe I've worked with a little bit. I got
one the other day from a person who I'm like,
this guy hates me. We've rubbed each other the wrong
way for years, and to have this person reach out
(31:51):
and say thank you so much for doing this. I've
been struggling with what I'm supposed to do here, and
you know, am I supposed to stay internal and try
to fight the good fight internally? Or am I just
supposed to leave? And also, so many people who've reached
out said I just had to leave. You know, I
got a new job, and I'm so much happier whatever.
But that sucks. Like the fact that there is truly
(32:14):
a chance that the Tesla vehicle business as we know
it won't exist in three hundred and sixty five days.
That sucks.
Speaker 5 (32:25):
But I mean, like in your letter you talked about
new Model Why sitting on the lot, Like, first of all,
that felt like news and also super serious, like that
that is a real problem. That's supposed to be the
hot car that you know.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
That's gonna that's gonna move.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
Yeah, yeah, And I'm not out here sharing inventory numbers
or anything like that. Where you can acknowledge from publicly
available data is that you can go to the website.
You can build out most configurations of Model Why and
it will say available today. You used to wait months
for these cars, and sure, we're great at production now
(33:00):
and things like that. But a brand new refresh, and
especially when when you're saying people have been waiting for
this refresh, they didn't buy in January because they were
waiting for this, you can instantly see that that's just
not true. People will not buy this car for multiple reasons.
One of them is that it is incredibly obvious that
(33:22):
you purchased this car in twenty twenty five. You can't
put a I bought this before he went crazy sticker
on any of these cars.
Speaker 4 (33:29):
So even if it marks you, it marks you as
like a post inauguration buyer exactly.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
Yeah. And even myself, you know, driving a cyber truck.
People have hated me right away from the cyber truck
because they've had design issues with it. They just haven't
liked the way it looks. But now it's like, listen,
you bought this he was already crazy, And I can
acknowledge that if I had picked my head up out
of the sand, I probably should have known by that
time where things were headed. But also shout out to Wes,
(33:55):
who you know, really built this cyber truck program. It's
a phenomenal truck from the inside.
Speaker 5 (34:00):
Yes, okay, So last question, Matt, and then we'll let
you go. Do you think this company can be turned around.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
Based on when you talk to protesters, They're going to
tell you no, because the expectation is not just getting
him out of CEO, but that he must get rid
of all of his shares as a real human that
lives in the real world. In twenty twenty five, I
acknowledge that you cannot buy anything without accidentally giving money
to a billionaire that you don't believe in. So what
I want to see is I want to see a
(34:27):
separation from Elon. I want to see the company say
we're sorry, let's focus on clean, renewable energies and then
give us a shot to win you back. There is
a chance there if that happens, but I also acknowledge
that he's not going to do that.
Speaker 5 (34:43):
So, Matt, thank you so much that this conversation has
been fascinating. I hope we can stay in touch, you
know whatever as a story plays out. Good luck with
the job search, and hopefully we'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
Yeah. Absolutely, thank you all so much.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
That was awesome.
Speaker 5 (35:07):
This episode was produced by Stacy Wong. Anna Masarakis is
our editor, Blake Maples handles engineering.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
And Dave Purcell factchecks. Our supervising producer.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
Is Magnus Henrickson.
Speaker 5 (35:18):
The e lining theme is written and performed by Taka
Yazuzawa and Alex Seviera. Brendan Francis Newham is our executive producer,
and Sage Bauman is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. A
big thanks to our supporters. Joel Weber and Bradstone. I'm
Max Chafkin. If you have a minute, rate and review
our show, it'll help other listeners find us and we'll
see you next week.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Let me tell you we have a new star.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
A star is born Elon mars Juson Kennemy.
Speaker 4 (00:14):
He is the Thomas Edison plus plus plus of our age.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
I feel for the guy. I would say ninety eight
percent really appreciate what he does.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
But those two percent that are nasty, they are I'll
pay in full post.
Speaker 5 (00:30):
We are meant for great things in the United States
of America, and Elon reminds.
Speaker 6 (00:34):
Us of that we don't have a fourth branch of
governments called Elon Musk.
Speaker 5 (00:46):
Welcome to Elon Ink, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
It's Tuesday, May thirteenth.
Speaker 5 (00:51):
I'm Max Chafkin, and I'm sitting here with Bloomberg's Elon
Musk reporter Dana Hall.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Hey, Dana, Hey, Max. All right, so today's show's going
to be a little different.
Speaker 5 (01:01):
You and I have an interview with Matt Lebrot, who
is a former manager in Tesla's sales operation who made
quite the splash last week. Dana, can you just give
us a sense of what happened, why we're talking to Matt.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
Yeah, so Matt is kind of it's kind of a
crazy story. In late April, he posted an anonymous letter
Tesla employees against Elon in which he basically said that
it was time to say the quiet part out loud
and talked a lot about the brand destruction because of
Elon's behavior. Two days later, he was fired, and now
(01:35):
he has kind of gone wide. Business Insider did a
profile of him, he has posted on LinkedIn, and he
has a really interesting story to tell. I mean, is
it is rare for someone who worked for Tesla for
as long as he did to kind of go so
publicly against the CEO of the company.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (01:51):
And this letter, which was originally posted on website Matt
made Tesla employees against Elon dot Com.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
It's gone everywhere.
Speaker 5 (02:00):
And I'm really excited about this conversation because we've been
talking really for months about the potential brand damage that
Elon Musk's you know, political activities have caused, and Matt,
I think has a unique perspective. We're gonna hear new things,
things that I think are going to be somewhat revelatory
for listeners in that conversation. But before we get there,
(02:20):
Dana We got to run through some of the Elon
Musk news this week because there's a lot going on.
As we pod on Tuesday morning, He's in Saudi Arabia.
Remember our friend of Pod, Kurt Wagner, predicted a boy's trip.
It appears that the boy's trip it's on.
Speaker 4 (02:36):
It's on, and I believe that Sam Malton is on
this trip as well, So it's kind of like a
strange bedfellows trip in the in the Saudi Arabian desert.
I have not been able to keep up with what
exactly Elon is saying, but I saw something cross the
transom about Optimists possibly being displayed or like a demo
of Optimists to Trump and NBS. So the other thing
(02:57):
worth noting is that this is Elon Musk's for trip
abroad since inauguration, So you know, he's going on this
kind of tour of the Middle East with Trump, the
first time he's kind of stepped away from the US
since an inauguration.
Speaker 5 (03:10):
Well, an optimist would make a certain sense. I mean,
it seems like part of the reason for Elon Musk
doing this beyond just getting to hang out with with
his pals and perhaps you know, squashed the beat with
Sam Altman is money because you know Xai is trying
to raise money. MBS, of course is good for it.
He is a is a major tech investor, and there
(03:31):
have been a lot of Saudi backed investments in Ai.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Let's go all the way back to April.
Speaker 5 (03:37):
Twenty second, the Tesla earnings call Dana, because there's a moment.
We didn't touch on this, I think at all in
our earning conversation. But there was a little good news
in that call.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
And let's let's first listen to the clip.
Speaker 6 (03:49):
Let's he was respected energy. The energy business is doing
very well. The Mega pack is that nables Tony companies
to output far more total energy then would otherwise.
Speaker 5 (04:00):
Good case the Mega Pack now that we we learned
during the earnings call that the sales are are up.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
You've been talking about this as long as I can.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
I love I love the I love the Mega Pack
as a product.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
I know everyone is like, oh god, Dana and her
Mega packs, but the Mega pack is cool, Like we.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Can you explain what it is before.
Speaker 5 (04:19):
I'm all for the love letter, but first let's like
give us a little context and try to if you
wouldn't mind, like just translating what Elon Musk just said into.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
Sure, I mean, frankly kind of looks like a big,
big refrigerator or like a steel box. But it's basically
you know, so, Tesla has two business units. There's the
car division and there's Energy. And the Energy division includes
you know, the solar roof, the power wall, which is
like the home battery that you put in your house
in case there's like a hurricane or a power outage
(04:49):
or whatever. And then there's the Mega pack, which is
Tesla's utility scale offering to utilities, and these things are
huge and banks of them are installed all over the
world North America, Europe, Australia, and they really are like
keyed to helping renewables come on to the grid. So,
you know, the sun doesn't always shine, it's not always windy,
(05:10):
but if you want to be able to store energy
and then be able to dispatch it back to the
grid during peak demand times, storage is key. And there
are a lot of big players in the energy storage
market and Tesla is one of them. But as I
reported recently, what was missing from that Ernie's call was
the fact that one of the big customers of the
Megapack is Xai, Elon's Ai company, and so Xai has
(05:34):
this supercomputer called Colossus good name, yeah, good name, big
data center in Memphis, Tennessee. That's gotten under a lot
of fire from environmental and racial justice groups because at
the moment they were using like gas fired generators to
kind of keep this plant up and running.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
And now what's happening.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
Is they are adding megapacks to this installation, which is
more energy efficient, and then they can kind of get
rid of the gas generators. But it's just another example
of you know, all of Elon's companies overlap, and one
company sells a product to another. And this was the
first time that I had seen, you know, in a filing,
like any notice of Xai buying megapas as a customer
(06:15):
to the tude of like two hundred and thirty million
dollars worth.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
How much of the total megapax sales is that? I mean?
Speaker 5 (06:22):
Is this like, is is the whole megapac thing basically
like a sham? It's just Elon musk moving money from
one company to another.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
No, because they actually do sell megapacks to a lot
of utilities around the world, like Pgene Southern California Edison.
I mean, they have a robust pipeline of sales.
Speaker 5 (06:37):
Okay, let's move on to the next story that I
wanted to bring up, which is the news uh in
the New York Times that the Federal Railroad Administration, this
is the part of the government that handles the nation's
rail infrastructure, is meeting with the boring company, Elon Musk's
tunneling venture about a possible bl eight point five billion
(07:02):
dollar tunnel. You know, Dan, I was interested in this
because there's been this narrative of Elon Musk kind of
withdrawing from Washington.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
He's back to his companies.
Speaker 5 (07:13):
Right and and I think there there may be some
truth to that, but as we've discussed, he's obviously still
spending a lot of time with Donald Trump. I mean,
they're in Saudi Arabia right now. But also I think
the next phase of this, as we as maybe doge
becomes less in the sort of center of the news
and and they're less focused on cutting or whatever, is
(07:33):
that they're gonna be contracts and this, and that Elon
Musk is going to be trying to get talk the
US government out of billions and billions of dollars, and
this Boring Company thing is is probably just you know,
the first of several of reports like this that we're
gonna hear.
Speaker 4 (07:49):
Yeah, it's interesting because of all of the companies at
Elon's empire, the Boring Company is like the least successful company.
I think that's bareness.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
To say that.
Speaker 5 (07:58):
The two or three or four, I'm not sure how
many miles of tunnels in Las Vegas that you can
drive a car through are not an impressive monument to
you know, technological innovation.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
You've been to the one in Las Vegas.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
I have not, But I mean of all of the
companies like the Boring Company, to me, I always thought
that the whole conceit of boring was let's figure out
how to perfect tunneling so that we can eventually like
settle Mars, where you're gonna need tunnels because there's no atmosphere.
And there's been a lot of news reports about boring,
like bidding or talking about building tunnels and all kinds
of crazy places, But the Las Vegas one is the
(08:33):
only one that actually exists that I'm aware of.
Speaker 5 (08:38):
I've done a lot of reporting on the Boring Company,
and I think you're probably right that there's some truth
and like in the back of Elon Musk's mind, yeah, sure,
mars whatever. But like, really the genesis the Boring Company was,
I want to get some infrastructure contracts out of Donald Trump.
And the Boring Company was founded, you know, just at
the beginning of the Trump administration, back when Steve Bannon
(08:59):
was talking about you know, infrastructure and so on, and
it was at the time, like as I understood it,
I mean, like a pretty transparent play to kind of
get in on that. Of course, Elon Musk is really
good at that. He's good at figuring out sort of
next generation solutions to problems that the government has, such
as rocket launches. But as you say, like the the
(09:21):
track record.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Isn't great, I mean we're not.
Speaker 5 (09:23):
We're talking about you can go from the Westgate in
Las Vegas to the Convention Center. That's that's a trip
you can also make on foot, but of course you
can get in a tunnel. And this would be on
like a whole other level if they if they were
to win this contract.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
Amtrak has been a target of the Trump administration for
quite a while. I mean, Musk has also taken put
shots at Amtrak. I think all of us who take
Amtrak could agree that, like, there are some inefficiencies in
the system, but it's not clear to me this you
know what exactly this contract would be for and and
they don't actually have it. And there it sounds like
they're talking to a lot of potential vendors.
Speaker 5 (09:57):
Yeah, this sounds like a very preliminary conversation. I will say, also,
there will be conversations about conflict of interest. Steve Davis,
who I think has been described Dana, Am I right,
COO of Doze or does he is also.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
COO of the boring company?
Speaker 5 (10:11):
So you're gonna have conversations about is this a conflict
of interest? Particularly you have Doge in the Department of Transportation. Meanwhile,
Doge is also sort of or somebody involved with Dose
is also potentially benefiting financially. That'll be something I think
for us to keep an eye on. All Right, last
thing here, Dana, and this will feed into the next conversation.
(10:34):
But Bill Gates has been on sort of a media tour.
He's making the decisions about his philanthropy. I guess he's
The plan is for him to give away all of
the philanthropy's money over the next twenty years, and in
the course of interviews about this, he's made a bunch
of comments about Elon Musk, and during an interview with
The Financial Times, he said that that Musks cuts to
(10:58):
USAID DOZES cuts USIID will lead to millions of deaths
and said the picture of the world's richest man killing
the world's poorest children is not a pretty one. He
brought up specifically Musk's comments about Doze cutting funding for
HIV prevention in Mozambique. Remember this was the These are
(11:19):
the cuts that Musk described as condoms to Gaza, falsely
because there is a province in Mozambique also called Gaza.
Turns out this funding was for HIV prevention. Gates is
saying that it's going to kill children. And we've talked
about brand damage a lot, but something about this, something
about Gates. This like very successful capitalist accusing Elon Musk
(11:42):
of being responsible for millions of deaths of children, Like
it just it feels significant.
Speaker 4 (11:48):
Yeah, and a successful billionaire whose own foundation has done
an enormous amount of work in the field of public
health and vaccines around the world. Right, So, I mean
the Gates Foundation is one of the big funders of
like global health and so to have Gates come out
and say this at a time when Gate is kind
of like exiting the stage and winding, you know, like
(12:10):
sort of signaling that like his philanthropy is going to
end the next stage to see ages, it's like a
parting shot to the world that like, you know, all
of these cuts are Elon's fault. And I think the
fact that Elon sort of gleefully posted on x that
he had spent the weekend feeding USA ed into the
wood shipperd he sort of goes hand in hand. I mean,
Elon himself very much acknowledged that Doge was was key
(12:33):
with that whole operation, and you're really seeing the fallout
now around the world.
Speaker 5 (12:38):
I want to say, for the record, Elon dismissed Gates
as a quote huge liar. The two have a long
history of beef. Dan I believe Gates sold some Tesla.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
Stock at some point and was sure there was there
was a theory that he was shortening Tesla stock.
Speaker 5 (12:53):
At some point Elon tweeted a me meme about Gates.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
So there's been a lot of a lot of back
and forth.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
It's one of the original feuds right, well.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Yeah, exactly, Okay, Dana.
Speaker 5 (13:09):
I am so happy that we have Matt Lebrot here,
the author of this letter about Tesla and Elon Musk,
longtime Tesla employee, Matt joining us from the Bay Area.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Thank you for being here.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
Absolutely happy to be here. Thank you so much.
Speaker 6 (13:25):
So.
Speaker 5 (13:25):
You worked at Tesla for I believe almost six years.
Tell us, just to create some context, what were you
doing at the company?
Speaker 2 (13:33):
What was your role there?
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Sure? Absolutely. I started in the field in southern California
as an assistant manager they call them customer experience managers
back then, and then was promoted to general manager of
another sales and delivery location in the Bay Area. That's
when I moved up here to Colma, South San Francisco area,
and then from there transitioned into some corporate roles where
I supported the least return team and then eventually made
(13:57):
my way over to customer education and internal training for
our sales and delivery teams. So when I left or
got asked to leave, however, we want to phrase that.
You know, my most recent role, I was creating sales
and delivery content for North America for the twenty five
hundred ish leaders and sales and delivery associates.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
So to back up for a second for people who
might not be aware of the sequence of events. I
got this anonymous letter in my inbox Tesla employees against Elon.
Tesla is ready to move forward. And the letter is
extraordinary and it says our products are not the problem,
our engineering, service and delivery teams are not the problem.
The problem is demand. The problem is Elon. And so
(14:42):
I get this letter and I'm like, oh my god,
who wrote this? And I started emailing with Matt, who
was anonymous at the time, and I was like, do
you work in sales? Like when can we meet? And like,
because we have very high barber publication at Bloomberg, I
couldn't write about it until I could verify his employment,
and like, so this letter comes out. I think every
journalist who covers Tesla was probably like dming you and
(15:05):
trying to meet with you. You ultimately talked to Business Insider,
but you got fired, Like two days later. Do you
want to talk about the sequence? Like the letter goes.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Up, start with why you wrote the letter in the
first place.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Sure, First of all, I was the only person to
write and publish the letter. There were no other employees
that were fully aware of me doing that. However, the letter,
you know, I appreciate the feedback I've gotten for it
being a well written letter. It's not all my ideas.
This is a compilation of conversations that I've had with
countless employees across North America over the last six months.
(15:41):
So that's where all of this information, and you know,
the idea really came from. And after increasing frustrations month
over month and you know, expecting Tesla to make some moves.
You know, we can of course go into deep about
the timeline of frustrations, but you know, really, once I
decided it was time to publish this, I did everything
(16:04):
I could to stay anonymous. The plan was to stay anonymous.
I am as relatively tech savvy as I think I
could be, so you know, I took these necessary steps.
I bought a new computer, I used my home Wi
Fi network to purchase the domain and build the website,
all these things that I thought I did to keep anonymous.
But within forty eight hours, I received a phone call
(16:27):
from a very polite HR associate, you know, shout out
to them, they're not the one who did this, right,
So she was very nice but you know, when she
let me know I was terminated, you know, she very
specifically said for using company resources. And again she's not
the one who did the investigation. I can't fight with
this person on it. But I very specifically didn't do that.
I took these steps appropriately to actively not do that.
(16:52):
As far as how I was found out. Again, we
can dig in more if we want, but info, Yeah,
Infosec's a big thing.
Speaker 4 (16:58):
Could you talk a little bit about the cyber truck
and and the fact that you own one and what
you did with your cyber truck as well?
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Yeah? Absolutely, Uh, you know, I did buy a cyber truck.
I will throw out there that I do not love
the way that it looks on the outside, but when
I drive it, I don't have to look at it,
and it's really great on the inside, So that sits
really well for me. My wife and I didn't even
have a ton of arguments about buying it. It was
it was kind of okay because I bought mine right
when it came out. I think by mid February I
(17:25):
had mine, and it was really through the lens of
we did need a truck. It would be pretty absurd
of me as a Tesla employee to buy a Rivian,
and I wanted to continue to support the company that
I worked for, So all those things added up to great.
Get a cyber truck. And then after I published my letter,
you know, this huge weight gets lifted. This tension that
I've been feeling about this for a long time was lifted.
(17:48):
And then the ideas start to flow, and I come
up with the idea of turning this cyber truck, which
has been communicated many times as being such a great billboard,
and it's like, great, let me billboard this thing up.
And I ran to home depot, grabbed some spray paint
and some stencils, and in my garage in the middle
of the night, spray painted this message that I wanted
(18:08):
to get across, and and that message is, you know,
pro clean energy, pro renewable resources, pro EV and pro Tesla,
all of those things can be true while still then
being anti elon. So spray painted that on the side
and I decided to park it next to the demo
drive fleet that they have in the parking structure, which
(18:30):
at least guaranteed anybody who's going to take a demo
drive they're they're gonna see this thing.
Speaker 5 (18:35):
Matt, why and maybe this this can get us into
kind of talking about what's happened as Elon has has
gotten more political, but like why that message specifically, I
mean pro EV, you know, pro clean energy, but against Elon?
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Why why against Elon?
Speaker 3 (18:51):
Yeah, the letter is not as political as the Business
Insider article you know went in that direction, but you
know the message was really the for Elon by our
primary customer base has changed and the reason for that
is a scattering and it started with him being more
active on Twitter and eventually turning into the acquisition of Twitter.
(19:14):
We started to see that transition happen. But as that
transition was happening, we were still seeing such an influx
of first time EV buyers. So, you know, twenty twenty two,
end of twenty twenty two, we're still seeing first time
EV buyers like we've never seen before. So the first
wave of people that were abandoning Tesla because of Elon
(19:35):
kind of were able to be hidden. And then that
took a huge skyrocket forward when he started to get
more political and specifically in a direction where again for
whatever reason, a lot of our customers disagree with.
Speaker 5 (19:49):
So, like your understanding of like maybe this is in
every Tesla customer, but this is a big part of
your customer base kind of like a left of center
kind of suburban type who's like interested in the environmental mission,
not necessarily like some kind of hardcore leftist, but certainly
not a Maga Republican sure, and that as Elon is
(20:14):
doing this, he is essentially alienating this huge constituency which
had been not necessarily buying all of Tesla's products, because
of course there are you know, there are other types
of customers for evs and so on, but buy a
lot of them.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
Yeah, absolutely, And everybody can fit into certain buckets, and
Tesla customers fit in multiple different buckets. And the only
one that I think that you're missing there is there
is this group that doesn't even definitely political lean a
certain direction, but they're free speech whatever your speech is,
and clean energy in whatever way it needs to be done.
So there's those folks as well. And I think that
(20:51):
again was the initial wave. Those were the people most
in tuned to what was going on on Twitter that
now x and those were the first wave.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
Internally, did like the alarm bells go off, because, like
we have argued on this show, quite a lot about
Tesla sales, and everyone would always be like, oh, the
sales are going to take a dive because Elon is
so political, And I would say, well, yes, but like
the lineup is old, and the cyber truck isn't doing well,
and like the model why really needs refresh? So like
there's multiple reasons why sales are taking a dip. You
(21:22):
can't blame it all on politics. But like walk us
through the timeline of you know, last July, muskandrses Trump October,
he campaigns with him, Trump wins the election. Like were
you getting data internally where you were like, oh, like
we're seeing a big drop off. We're seeing a big
cancel cancelation of orders.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Like as a.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
Sales guy, like you must be tracking this very closely,
like in real time day to day. Was there like
when did you realize like holy crap, like this we're
starting a creator here.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
Sure, yeah, yeah, there's there's so many different data points
that you can go off of. But also in car
sales and customer service in general, a lot of it
goes off a vibe and how the vibes of the
days are going, and you know, the customers that you're
speaking to on the phone that submitted a trade in request,
how open those people are to converse with you. You
(22:12):
start to notice some changes there, But I think it's
also worth acknowledging. You know, January twenty twenty four and
to June, those were really tough financial times. Car interest
rates very very high, so you really start to see
a slow down there that is really attributed to just
the current state. I do think it is worth calling
out the age of the why by that point as.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Well was a little bit of a factor.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
But I mean, how long has the Honda CRV looked
like the Honda CRV? Right? The majority of customers, especially
the ones that Tesla has been going after the last
few years, they don't. Those aren't the ones who care
about the most up to date thing. So by June
we're seeing promotional aprs, we're seeing interest rates, all these
things that Tesla hasn't really done before. Lease really big
(22:58):
lease focuses things like that. So you see Teslas start
to make some moves there, and then you as sales,
you kind of breathe a little bit where you're like, okay,
this is working this you know the May June where like,
all right, we sold so many model wise, life is grand.
It was just a financial issue. And then September rolls
around and Septembers where you're like, well, we're still doing
(23:22):
the same aprs. We've got FSD transfer.
Speaker 5 (23:26):
Sorry just to pause FSD transfer, meaning you're not charging
people an additional seven grand right to get this full
self driving software in their new Tesla. So it's like
effectively a seven thousand dollars price cut.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
Yeah, it is worth acknowledging that, you know. It is
kind of the way of saying, hey, we know we
didn't give you FSD for your first car, so sen
you already bought it, let's transfer it. So there's pieces
to that, but so all these levers are there to
be pulled and we're still selling cars. But what you
can acknowledge is the transition of we don't have a
backlog of customers the same way that you have before
(24:04):
for any customer who has purchased a Tesla over the years,
you know, customer service hasn't really been the biggest focus,
and well it hasn't truly been our focus, but end
result wise, it hasn't really hit the mark yet. But
what you would see is, oh, you're not ready to
take delivery of your car, no problem, We're gonna unmatch
(24:26):
it from you because it's just going to go to
the next customer in line by. But most of the
time we wouldn't respond, so that would happen. But then
when September rolls around, we have to make this push
for hey, maybe be a little nicer about this, Maybe
hold some hands through this process, and don't just rip
cars away from customers, because when you rip it away
(24:48):
from them, there isn't another customer in line waiting for
that car. And we're not talking just cyber trucks here,
we're talking model wise, the most popular car in the
world right that there is in and Tory available in
the moment for anybody.
Speaker 4 (25:08):
So what happened between June and September? Was it the endorsement?
Speaker 2 (25:11):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (25:11):
Was it that Elon endorsed Trump?
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (25:13):
And I think it's important to talk about the people
who used to come in and be like, I don't
really love what Elon's saying on Twitter. You know, whether
they're there for a service appointment or they are thinking
about getting a new car, but they're not super happy
about it. We start to have less of those conversations
because those customers just didn't come. It wasn't like we're
(25:33):
fighting with people and we're trying to overcome these objections.
It's really easy to not support a company you don't
want to support, you just don't show up. So customers,
total foot traffic is down, total demo drives, things like
that are down. You know, just and this is you
can sit outside of a location and count people coming
in right if you want, Like you see those things.
Speaker 4 (25:56):
Okay, So that's through September. So then we've got the fall,
Like the election happens, Trump wins, Musk is at inauguration.
There's the whole awkward gesture which Max and I joke
about all the time. Like you're in sales, you're on
these team calls every day, Like are people talking openly
about this or is it all like sides slack messages
(26:18):
or dms or like going out for beers after work
and be like, oh my god, what are we gonna
do with our CEO? Like how much of an awareness
was there internally that the brand issues were real?
Speaker 3 (26:28):
Yeah? Side messages on teams is the name of the game.
You're sitting on these conference calls where you're talking about
business needs, whether we're having a just a training meeting
where we're talking about what trainings we need to put out,
or full sales operations, or even North America leadership calls.
Like all of these calls, nobody is saying, hey, traffic
(26:51):
is down due to how people are feeling about the
actions of our CEO. They just say traffic is down
or whatever it may be. And then on the smaller
groups where you're like, okay, we can talk more real,
Like for these just training meetings, you're like, we can
talk real here, there is still no acknowledgment about this
giant elephant in the room. So the messages that the
(27:14):
conversations you have with peers where you're acknowledging the real
elephant in the room two on two conversations like teeny
tiny groups with your peers, but no, nothing huge. And
I even specifically, especially around this October turning point, ask
my manager at the time directly, I'm like, hey, I know,
(27:37):
I know we're fighting here. We're doing everything we can,
We're putting out the best training content we've ever put out.
But when you're in these meetings with your boss and
their boss, do you is there this acknowledgment about why traffic,
like and she just straight up tells me. She's like, no, no,
we just don't talk about it. I'm like, okay, well,
but like, doesn't that mean that we then spend time
focusing on a solve that doesn't actually reference the this
(28:00):
root cause. And she's say, eh, what ifs like it is?
Speaker 5 (28:05):
It just sounds so oppressive, especially at a company that's
like talks about itself, is grounded and thinking things through
and first, you know, all the all the kind of
I just imagine many people at Tesla just sort of
in this state of real like unease because on one hand,
like I think, and this comes up in the letter,
(28:26):
but like everyone kind of knows that Elon Musk has
done amazing things and it's hard to separate his identity
from Tesla. And then on the other hand, this kind
of like growing realization that his identity is harming Tesla,
maybe even depending on your point of view, potentially putting
(28:47):
it at in like an existential risk. It just I
just imagine that's like a pretty heavy to go through.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
Yeah, yeah, it really is. And you know, one of
the reasons that I went live with the letter is
because when you all are not hearing these bigger conversations
in bigger groups, and again maybe it's just you and
a couple of people talking about it, like you do
actually feel like this thing is happening around you and
you have no control over what's going on, and this
weight is just you know, smushing you down. But once
(29:16):
you start, once you meet a new person that is
willing to say the quiet part out loud with you,
it's just like, oh, okay, good, there's another person. And
I am known for speaking my mind, and I'll come
off of mute in some of these calls, and I'll
call a spade a spade. I'll say, hey, can we
just acknowledge that the new model, why, if it had
launched last year, would have been selling like crazy. You know,
(29:37):
these types of things where I'll come off mute, and
these groups that I'm in, these people who I've known
for a really long time, whether they're three levels higher
than me or not, I respect these people. I get
these side messages, you know, one that's like, amen, man,
thank you so much for saying that. And I'm like, oh,
this person is huge within the company, and they're teamsing
(29:58):
me on the side to say thank you for saying that,
Like they don't feel empowered to say this thing that sucks,
and these are the people that have been you know what,
We can say all of the theomenal things that Elon has done,
but we can also say that some of these people
that I'm referencing are the people who led sales and
delivery from twenty eighteen onward, where we ramped this insane
(30:24):
operation and did these incredible things at lower staffing levels
than anybody else would ever do, and things like that.
So these are the people who were there for those things,
and we're pivotal in making that happen, and they don't
feel comfortable saying anything right now.
Speaker 4 (30:41):
So now that the letter is out and your LinkedIn
post is out there, and the Business Insider piece ran, like,
what kind of feedback are you getting from other automakers,
from other salespeople, from your colleagues current and former?
Speaker 1 (30:54):
I mean, you must just be getting inundated.
Speaker 4 (30:55):
And people are like, thank you so much for speaking out,
but like, why aren't other people speaking out? Is it
just that Elon still has an iron grip on the
company even though he's not really there every day and
he's running four other companies, and as we speak, he's
in Saudi Arabia with President Trump.
Speaker 3 (31:10):
Yeah, it's been fantastic. I've gotten great emails, direct messages,
all these kind of things. But I'll also acknowledge that
there are people who have outreached where those outreaches mean
more to me. And it's one of those things if
you can acknowledge when you're in a sphere of people, again,
whether we're calling it, you know, your Blue sphere of
(31:31):
California or whatever, when you're surrounded by like minded people,
you don't expect too much pushback. But some of these
messages that I'm getting are from people across North America
that maybe I've worked with a little bit. I got
one the other day from a person who I'm like,
this guy hates me. We've rubbed each other the wrong
way for years, and to have this person reach out
(31:51):
and say thank you so much for doing this. I've
been struggling with what I'm supposed to do here, and
you know, am I supposed to stay internal and try
to fight the good fight internally? Or am I just
supposed to leave? And also, so many people who've reached
out said I just had to leave. You know, I
got a new job, and I'm so much happier whatever.
But that sucks. Like the fact that there is truly
(32:14):
a chance that the Tesla vehicle business as we know
it won't exist in three hundred and sixty five days.
That sucks.
Speaker 5 (32:25):
But I mean, like in your letter you talked about
new Model Why sitting on the lot, Like, first of all,
that felt like news and also super serious, like that
that is a real problem. That's supposed to be the
hot car that you know.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
That's gonna that's gonna move.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
Yeah, yeah, And I'm not out here sharing inventory numbers
or anything like that. Where you can acknowledge from publicly
available data is that you can go to the website.
You can build out most configurations of Model Why and
it will say available today. You used to wait months
for these cars, and sure, we're great at production now
(33:00):
and things like that. But a brand new refresh, and
especially when when you're saying people have been waiting for
this refresh, they didn't buy in January because they were
waiting for this, you can instantly see that that's just
not true. People will not buy this car for multiple reasons.
One of them is that it is incredibly obvious that
(33:22):
you purchased this car in twenty twenty five. You can't
put a I bought this before he went crazy sticker
on any of these cars.
Speaker 4 (33:29):
So even if it marks you, it marks you as
like a post inauguration buyer exactly.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
Yeah. And even myself, you know, driving a cyber truck.
People have hated me right away from the cyber truck
because they've had design issues with it. They just haven't
liked the way it looks. But now it's like, listen,
you bought this he was already crazy, And I can
acknowledge that if I had picked my head up out
of the sand, I probably should have known by that
time where things were headed. But also shout out to Wes,
(33:55):
who you know, really built this cyber truck program. It's
a phenomenal truck from the inside.
Speaker 5 (34:00):
Yes, okay, So last question, Matt, and then we'll let
you go. Do you think this company can be turned around.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
Based on when you talk to protesters, They're going to
tell you no, because the expectation is not just getting
him out of CEO, but that he must get rid
of all of his shares as a real human that
lives in the real world. In twenty twenty five, I
acknowledge that you cannot buy anything without accidentally giving money
to a billionaire that you don't believe in. So what
I want to see is I want to see a
(34:27):
separation from Elon. I want to see the company say
we're sorry, let's focus on clean, renewable energies and then
give us a shot to win you back. There is
a chance there if that happens, but I also acknowledge
that he's not going to do that.
Speaker 5 (34:43):
So, Matt, thank you so much that this conversation has
been fascinating. I hope we can stay in touch, you
know whatever as a story plays out. Good luck with
the job search, and hopefully we'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
Yeah. Absolutely, thank you all so much.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
That was awesome.
Speaker 5 (35:07):
This episode was produced by Stacy Wong. Anna Masarakis is
our editor, Blake Maples handles engineering.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
And Dave Purcell factchecks. Our supervising producer.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
Is Magnus Henrickson.
Speaker 5 (35:18):
The e lining theme is written and performed by Taka
Yazuzawa and Alex Seviera. Brendan Francis Newham is our executive producer,
and Sage Bauman is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. A
big thanks to our supporters. Joel Weber and Bradstone. I'm
Max Chafkin. If you have a minute, rate and review
our show, it'll help other listeners find us and we'll
see you next week.
Host
David Papadopoulos
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