March 18, 2025 • 35 mins
In some ways, Elon Musk had a quiet week—if making news on a daily instead of hourly basis counts as quiet. This week on Elon, Inc., the panel— Max Chafkin, Dana Hull and Bloomberg Businessweek columnist Amanda Mull—discusses Mull’s latest story about the wrong turns Musk has taken with the Tesla brand.
And while Tesla dealerships and Supercharger stations are increasingly the focus of anti-Musk ire, the panel ponders the future of SpaceX and Starlink, especially as the latter is seeing growth among its competitors.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. Let me tell you
we have a new star.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
A star is born Elon up On mars Juson Kennemy.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
He is the Thomas Edison plus plus plus of our age.
Speaker 4 (00:18):
Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
I feel for the guy.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
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 four post.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
We were meant for great things in the United States
of America, and Elon reminds.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Us of that we don't have a fourth branch of
governments called Elon Musk.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Welcome to Elon Ang, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk.
It's Tuesday, March eighteenth. I'm your host, David Papadopolis. Now
this week has mercifully given us a bit of a
break from the non stop barrage of Elon Indoze news.
But that doesn't mean things are quiet in the Musk Empire.
There's been all sorts of news on the SpaceX front,
(01:06):
and we'll start off there, and then Amanda Mall will
join us to talk about a terrific piece you just
pen for BusinessWeek about the epic brand destruction. Elon has
unleased at Tesla to talk about everything SpaceX. We have
our two regulars, Max Chafkin and Dana Hall. Maxilo to you, Hello, David, Dana,
(01:26):
how are you hello?
Speaker 4 (01:28):
Hello?
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Now, I know that I often say on this show,
I know nothing about what we're about to talk about,
but I truly and when it comes to SpaceX, I
truly know nothing about this. So you guys are going
to help me like you're going to help our listeners. Dana,
the stranded astronauts up there at the space station are
coming home courtesy of Elon. Musk tell us about it.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Well, First of all, the phrase stranded is something that
NASA has kind of pushed back on.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
They're stranded, they're stranded and miserable.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
I mean, I know that journalists love to say that
they're stranded and they're stuck, but the truth is that
they're doing research and they're there because they want to
be there. And yes, they were supposed to come home
on a Boeing Starliner craft. NASA made the decision not
to send them home on the Boeing craft, So now
they are coming home on a SpaceX Dragon capsule. And
(02:21):
this is a big win for Elon because it kind
of plays into this narrative that quote unquote SpaceX is
rescuing the astronauts, and yeah, I mean they are. They
are bringing them home, and that's a huge win for Elon.
And SpaceX has a brand as like the most reliable
way to get to and from the space station.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
NASA has, as Dana is saying, a reliable way to
get astronauts to and from the International Space Station it
is SpaceX. It is also and separately attempting to find
a second way. Now that is very annoying to Elon
Musk since he essentially has a monopoly on this business.
So as they've been developing this, Musk has been at
(02:59):
pains to spin this as some kind of huge failure,
and it is. It is definitely a setback for Boeing.
But NASA could have sent these astronauts home much sooner
if it had wanted to. It chose not to, And
as Dan is saying, they chose to be there.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Okay, fine, so you guys insist that they're not stranded,
but they are. We can agree that they are coming home.
They're not.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
They're they're traveling now, They're they're hurtling through.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
As we speak through the void of the sound over
there that I hear, is that the sound of them
hurtling through space.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
By the time listeners hear this podcast, they may splash ocean.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Yeah, so the astronauts are on their way home. I mean,
they are in the capsule and they are expected to
splash down, like Tuesday evening. They will splash down Tuesday.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Around the time this podcast splashes down as you're listening.
A splashdown is is a term that everybody loves to
use with these things. Right, there's no other way to
come back from the space station if you're not you know,
beyond splashing again.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Okay, David, you know you realize it's because they are
landing in the ocean. Like it's cost.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
I'm aware of that, but is in every case it's
separate news. Starlink, a key division of SpaceX, is getting
a competitor or Max Competitive Tours. Tell us about it, all.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Right, Yeah, so there's a bunch of stuff happening around Starlink,
and in particular around Starlink. Competitors is a new spinoff
from Alphabet, the parent company of Google, which is called.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
T A A RX.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
I guess a titara is how you say, I don't
know how to say it. It is a high speed
internet company. It does not use satellites. It uses I'm
not etting this up. It uses lasers that are mounted
on towers. Apparently they can send high speed data, very
long rate a laser, essentially like fiber optic cables, but
in the sky. And this is being spun as a
(04:56):
potential Starlink competitor. This is the thing that other technology
company have talked about. It is not a direct competitor
starting What it is is another potential way to deliver
high speed internet to people in rural areas, which is
like the main use case for Starlink. Now, I want
to say two things. One is this is like very
very speculative. The company, according to the report in the Verge,
(05:18):
which is the one that we all saw, has like
two dozen employees. Google has been trying to find ways
to provide broadband internet to rural areas for a very
long time, with.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
Very little success.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
This actually had its roots in their balloon Internet program,
which you may or may not remember.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
I don't.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
That did not end well.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
This is not how like you know you're going to
log on to Facebook and you need to.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Said that the Balloon Internet program.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Did not want Now I want to say this though
this is again very speculative, not worth banking on at
the moment.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
That said, but a window into something.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Well, it shows you number one, that there are multiple
ways for companies to go after Starlink. We often talk
about Elon Musk kind of having a monopoly, right because
he has a lot of satellites, but he doesn't have
a monopoly on Internet access because there are other ways
to deliver the Internet. You can get your Internet via
fiber rocket cable, You can get your Internet via cell
phone tower. You could even conceivably get your Internet via
(06:18):
some crazy laser.
Speaker 4 (06:19):
Things that you know. I don't know, David, make sure
I don't totally understand.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Now.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
The other thing is there are other Starlink competitors. There
are a couple of companies that are sort of legacy
satellite providers that use older technology but also provide satellite
Internet service. There is also an EU company. Yeah you
tellt Yeah, I think it's like Eutel Sat maybe really
probably the most literal name.
Speaker 4 (06:44):
For a for a company in history.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
It is a EU based satellite provider and this company
is getting a lot of buzz.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Stock has been soaring.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Yeah, it's it's been up like five times over the
last month. Over the past month. There is there is
thought that Europeans may, especially European governments, may prefer to
do business with a European space company at a time when,
of course Donald Trump is you know, taking this nationalistic
pose and Elon Musk is so closely.
Speaker 4 (07:15):
Allied with him.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
So there are these other options, and I think seeing
these other options materialize kind of hints at the ways
that this bet that Elon Musk has made on Donald
Trump could go bad. His businesses, while very strong, have vulnerabilities.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
So, Dana, we've obviously seen it again and again and
again in enormous numbers when it comes to Tesla, that
old customer base walking away from the company, and we're
going to talk about that at length again in the
back half of the show. Maybe some signs that a
little bit of that now happening potentially in the starlink space.
The Guardian, I should point out, had a piece that
(07:54):
came out yesterday or today citing some people who said
I've given up my Starlink. I would have just myself
slapped the bumper sticker on my Starlink and kept and
kept using it. But maybe some signs emerging there.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Sure, I mean, you know, I think what's funny is
that for so long, I mean in the early days,
like Tesla was the scrappy upstart taking on legacy Atto,
and you know, Starlink was the scrappy telecom company taking
on the big incumbents. And now that Elon is who
he is, doing what he's doing with the Trump administration,
the only way that consumers feel like they have political
(08:31):
agency to kind of fight back is to you know,
slap a bumper sticker or give up their product. I
mean that said, most people buy products because they like
the products, Like, yeah, you know, equally, there are a
lot of people that are probably upset with Jeff Bezos.
I'm not seeing people like vandalizing Whole Foods or canceling
Amazon in the big numbers that they're you know, virtue
(08:52):
signaling about their Tesla's.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
I just don't think right the rejection is quite is
quite a strong, but that is a good The virtue
signaling term max is important because Guardian article like actually
came out I misspoke, it came out on Sunday.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
The lead image is like a Scottish folks. It's not
exactly like he's barefoot on the beach. There must be
like three or four other people like.
Speaker 4 (09:15):
This is not necessarily a huge court.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
I do want to say, though, there are other customers
that are rethinking Starlink.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
You know, we're seeing reports out of Italy.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Remember we talked some weeks ago about the deal that
Starlink was in talks with Georgia Maloney and the Italian
government to provide. So there's now increasing opposition in Italy
over this deal. It is not a done deal and
so and we're seeing you know, the opposition parties in
Italy saying, hey, we should do this with a European player,
not with space A. You tell set, well, yeah, assumably
(09:47):
it isn't just virtue signaling, right like there are strategic
reasons why countries might not want to know it has
it can't.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
It certainly can't be virtue signaling in the same way
it is with the Tesla, because who the hell knows
what your internet is?
Speaker 5 (10:00):
Is?
Speaker 1 (10:00):
You know how you're and so it's truly you must
really when you get rid of it, you must truly
be concerned about your association with the company. If you're
Italy or as a customer, you'd be like you must
be just like I can't signal to my neighbors and
my friends and he you know, I can't send them
a message. But man, for me as a consumer, I
just really don't want to give him any money. That's
(10:21):
what it has to be. And we'll just see ultimately
how beyond that, Scotsman, how big that universe is. And
then over the weekend, Dana, we had an ex from
Elon claiming that the first SpaceX mission to Mars is
going to happen next year.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
What say you, Well, he's been saying that for a
long time, so that's not really new. What was new
was that that Optimists would be on board, right, So
the idea is that the Optimist is going to Mars
before the humans.
Speaker 4 (10:47):
You don't need a life support system, right, true.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
So it just sort of shows once again how like
all of his products and all everything that he's doing,
it's all in the service of Mars, right Like the
boring company tunnels are all about Mars. Optimist is gonna
work on Mars, and he's excited about it because you know,
he's now got this relationship with Trump, Trump wants to
go to Mars by the end of his first term.
I mean, this is the whole enchilada. It's all about Mars.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
I think there's a second reason why he's talking about
I mean, I take Danna's point that, you know, freelon
Mars is the whole enchilada. But also, and we'll get
to this in the next segment, Tesla stock is collapsing
right now. Optimist is a Tesla product. He has used
SpaceX in the past to provide marketing Tesla. That's what
that's in part what this is. Right Saying he's gonna
(11:35):
send Optimists to Mars is a way to potentially remind
Tesla investors like I've got this really awesome robot called Optimists,
and you know it's gonna be worth thirty trillion dollars
or whatever. The other thing I want to say, there
is no Mars program. Not only does does starship does
it not appear to be technically ready or anywhere near
(11:55):
ready to do the things that Elon is saying.
Speaker 4 (11:58):
NASA hasn't agreed to that. The thing that starts.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
But being under Trump, if Musk really wants to go
to Mars asap is NASA. I'm not going to say yes.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
I think we assume that Donald Trump will be in
favor of that. I don't think we know how the
politics of that are going to work. There are other
constituents here, there are other defense contractors, there are voters
in the states where those defense contractors operate, on many
which are red states. There's going to be a lot
of political opposition to like taking money away from one
(12:30):
NASA program and putting in another. And there would also
be a lot of opposition to just like taking money
away from what like Social Security employees or something. I mean,
I'm not saying cut, I'm gonna say from not saying recipients.
I'm saying they are cutting a huge, huge numbers of
staff from the Social Security Administration and many other administrations.
(12:52):
And one of the things that Elon Musk has said
he thinks that we should do with that money is
put into a MARS program. So, like, I don't know
why that's far fetched. That is that is kind of like.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
What he said he in that case, and that is
a political a tough sell politically.
Speaker 4 (13:05):
I'll say.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Now, the other thing is they would need to make
this starship do a lot more things than it has
already done. I mean, when Elon Musk went on the
Rogan podcast, there was a lengthy discussion about the heat
shield on the Starship spacecraft, and it is not working yet.
It is a novel design that they have not figured out.
And that is among several problems that are sort of novel,
(13:29):
including attempting to refuel this thing in space. There's a
lot of questions about how many launches it'll take.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Will there will be some sort of refueling vessel waiting
for it up in space something.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
That is the plan. So so he's going to launch
the just to get to the Moon.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
The plan is he's going to launch Starship, and then
there are going to be a succession of many fuel launch.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Like water stations in a marathon, like.
Speaker 4 (13:54):
Water stations in America.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
You know how tricky that can be. Grab the water
to watch.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Sometimes it gets dropped on you. But and in space
sometimes the fuel just gets boiled off and disappears. So
there are lots of issues. Again, it's not not to
say that these issues are going to be impossible. It's
just like acting like this is a done deal either
technically or politically, is you know, bordering on delusional.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Okay, let's move on to Tesla. Okay. We're now joined
by Amanda mal a writer for Business Week. Amanda, thanks
for joining us, Thanks for having me, Amanda. You just
published today a terrific piece about Tesla and the brand
destruction that Elon has wrought there, and there was a
(14:39):
line that really jumped out at me and I wanted
to ask you about it. You wrote that it's nearly
impossible to think of a comparable example of a company
detonating its own brand. Tell us about that. We've debated
this a little bit on the show before, and we
were wondering what kind of historical comparisons there were, and
you found none.
Speaker 5 (15:01):
Yeah, Like, I've written about consumerism and branding and marketing
for a long time, and what Tesla is doing with
its customer base and its market positioning and it's branding
right now is something that you know, I sort of
stumped me for an analog in the history of consumption,
because you know, brands pivot all the time. They seek
(15:22):
to change their markets, they seek to expand their markets,
they seek to find new kinds of customers. They do
that in all sorts of ways, but very, very rarely
is that done through telling almost their entire existing customer
base that like not own yes to essentially go, you know,
f themselves. And that is quite literally what Elon has
(15:45):
done with the current Tesla customer base, which is overwhelmingly
left of center people not necessarily libs or progressives, but
like people who are concerned about the environment and willing
to change their habits and make a very large purchase
to sort of like put their money where their mouth.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
And was he fully aware do you believe at just
how much he was going to turn them away when
he made this pivot, or was is he surprised at all?
Speaker 5 (16:10):
I think Elon currently seems concerned about this pivot and
what it's doing to Tesla sales, what it's doing to
Tesla's share price. I think you can see that in
the sort of car show that they put on at
the White House last week. I don't know what he expected, Like,
it's very hard for me to put myself in his
sort of mindset going into this, because I think any
(16:32):
anybody who works in branding or marketing would tell you
that this is like what would happen when you changed
the identity of the company from something that sort of
flatters the sensibilities of progressives and people who are interested
in the environment and in staving off climate change to
something that is, you know, supportive of climate change, supportive
of antagonizing that customer base.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
On that antagonizing point, there was a moment on the
Stephen Colbert Show last week that kind have captured this
a bit. Let us understand that in general, the Colbert
Live audience is a progressive, wealthy, uh East Coast crowd,
give or take. I'm sure there's some tourists in all tourists,
(17:15):
but are they not.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
It's probably left of center, given that Colbert's left of center,
But my guess is it's like more centrist than than
like the regular cross section of New York.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
All right, well, let's let's listen to that clip. Well,
there was a silver lining on the implosion of the
world economy. It's bad for Elon Musk too. Yesterday, Well.
Speaker 4 (17:39):
That is not great for sales.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Wow wow, Now, Max, What struck me having watched it
last week was uh, just how raw it sort of
felt from the crowd and how much Colbert and and
the with him, we're sort of shocked by the extent
(18:03):
of the reaction. And yeah, it's it's a thing.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Yeah, I mean, I think they're two misunderstandings, and Amanda
has kind of hinted at both of them. One is
the sort of misunderstanding of his own customer base and
like what they were excited about, what their politics look like,
and how they felt about Donald trumpor would feel about
Donald Trump. And the second, frankly, is a misunderstanding of
(18:30):
Donald Trump's voters and how enthusiastic they are to buy
electric vehicles or to you know, participate in the fandom
of somebody that does what looks like to most saying
people a Nazi salute, right Like, most people, including most Republicans,
do not like that stuff. They don't like the like
(18:50):
trolling version of Elon Musk. And you see that in
the poll numbers. Musk's poll numbers are worse than Donald
Trump's pull numbers, which is pretty amazing, honestly, considering that
Musk was a very popular figure just a couple of
years ago, beloved essentially and admired by people of both parties,
and he has managed to just like blow past even
(19:12):
one of the most divisive people, you know, public figures,
you know, in the world.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Yeah, am I talking with some of my friends who
are members of MAGA, and I've raised with them and
I've said, what do you think about this, you know,
buying a Tesla, And I think that the sentiment has
been no chance in hell has essentially been what I've
heard back now, Amanda on that White House lawn sales
(19:41):
pitch that we saw last week Musk and Trump and
there's this whole fleet of Tesla's, of all colors and
shapes and sizes. You wrote in the piece that to
you it reeks of desperation. Is that what this is
here and that it is not going to be an
elixir of sorts for the brand.
Speaker 5 (20:04):
Yes, I think that when you see a stunt like that,
My reading of it was that Elon understands that, like
his his traditional consumer is not interested in associating with
what he's now associated the brand with and what these
protests have very effectively further associated the brand with, and
he understands it seems that he needs to find some
(20:27):
sort of other like Polish for this situation, and so
he went to Donald Trump, which who was divisive but
extremely popular among a large swamp of the population, and
it was essentially trying to more explicitly hook Tesla up
to not just his own cult of personality, but to
Donald Trump's. And I think that it probably worked for
(20:50):
like some small number of people who were really, really
in tune to, you know, signals coming from Trump himself.
But like most of Trump's voter are not fully bought
in ideologues to the weirdest parts of internet right wing thought.
They are regular people who, like Max SAIDs don't necessarily
want to be associated with a lot of the things
(21:13):
that Elon Musk explicitly associates himself with. Like people who
want to own the Libs through their car purchases have
like a wealth of options. They have all kinds of
trucks and SUVs.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
And buying a Model three is not that is not
how you achieve it.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
I remember that ad that which we talked about. I
showed this demanda before we started taping. But Dan, I'll remember,
well America Pack ran these ads that were like, the
Libs don't want you to buys to like take zin
or eat red meat or buy a truck.
Speaker 4 (21:40):
And you see a picture of a truck, it's not
a cyber truck. It's a gag.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Well, we Man and I were trying to figure out
what it was, but we couldn't figure out. It may
have been a rock generated truck, but in any case,
it was definitively not a cyber truck like you can
buy as a man of center piece.
Speaker 4 (21:55):
You can buy like a V eight, you know, or whatever.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
You can buy a F two fifty and on the
libs that way fifty big you can if you really
want to commit. But but in any case, like there's
just you know, it's it's just not clear that like
the pitch of Sustainable Transport has found purchase with that.
Speaker 5 (22:17):
He's in a really he's in a really crowded market
for symbols of owning the libs via you know, vehicular manner.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Okay, but but he does he is quite good at
owning the libs, though in general perhaps not via via
vehicle uh sales. Now, Dan, I want to raise this
with you though, because there was a Washington Post story
that came out in the last couple of days that
says that Google search increases or Internet search increases in
Red America for quote by a Tesla are way up.
(22:47):
And then they cite a bunch of politicians and sorts
no buyers to be They don't cite a single buyer,
but they have a bunch of politicians sort of really
pushing in the wake of the White House lawn ship
the Tesla brand. We are from where you sit your
dubious this is going to go anywhere. I mean, there
(23:07):
are showrooms, by the way, I looked up in red America.
There are showrooms in Meridian, Idaho, and Council Bluffs, Iowa,
and Strongsville, Ohio, and Chattanooga, Tennessee. They're not rushing to
those dealerships to buy musks.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
Shift to the right and the effort to kind of
pitch Tesla as a car to middle America began quite
a while ago when the company moved its headquarters from
California to Texas. And you know, if you look at Tesla,
like the mission of the company is about accelerating clean energy,
but they really market the car as just being like
(23:39):
a cool tech car. Right. So they've been aware that
there has always been a ceiling to the number of
liberal clostal consumers who were going to buy a Tesla.
They knew that they had to kind of reach out
to red state America a long time ago, which is
part of why they moved to Texas, which is part
of why they came out with the cyber truck. But
that said, the infrastructure for EVS in Middle America is
(24:01):
still not as strong, and like the state incentives are
not as strong as they are in places like California
and Colorado. That said, like Texas is a big state
for EVS, and there are a lot of people who
drive Tesla's in Texas. It's all Texas and Florida. So like,
I think people have the wrong impression that you know,
EV penetration is you know, blue state only. It's actually
(24:23):
the penetration is warm state. Texas and Florida are huge
EV states. So this shift has been going on for
quite some time and predates Trump selection.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
You know that that made for TV infomercial thing and
talking about the white on the White House lawn. You know,
I think if you watched it, it wasn't a great
ad for Tesla. It was a great piece of content
for Donald Trump because well it was. It was really
entertaining and really fun. It had this moment where Trump
got in the model atque computer Everything's computer. Yeah, it's
(24:58):
all computer.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
This is a different panel that I've had.
Speaker 5 (25:02):
Everything's computer, that's.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Beautiful and and like that was a viral moment, and
and it just really had the contours of like of
a reality show, like an episode of The Apprentice that' said,
the actual like sales pitch was kind of buried in
a middle like a press conference, a bunch of Trump's antics.
And then the whole point of this thing was that
Trump was gonna buy a car, which he barely did
in the thing. You watch the thing right that Trump
(25:27):
gets in the car, he takes a bunch of questions.
Half an hour goes by, then he starts saying his goodbyes.
He says, oh, thank you, Elon, thank you. Every Then
the reporters are like, mister President, what car are you
gonna buy? And he just like flips around and kind
of casually goes like, oh, that one. And it doesn't
look like a considered purchase, doesn't look like something he's
truly excited about. And I think this gets to a
(25:47):
more profound problem with Elon Musk, which is that he
is now in a sort of relationship, a business relationship
with Donald Trump, who is not somebody who is really
all about kind of win win partner ships. And I
think it's pretty clear that Donald Trump is doing very
well in this partnership.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
You know.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
After this event, the New York Times reported that Elon
Musk had agreed to give another one hundred million dollars
to donate another one hundred million dollars to Donald Trump's Superpack.
Not his own superpack, because Muscle is putting money into
that for the Wisconsin State Supreme Court, but an additional
one hundred million bucks for Trump to spend as he pleases.
Trump is doing really well here. And again I don't
(26:27):
know that Elon Musk got his hundred million dollars worth
in that event.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
Well, the other thing that was significant about that event
was that Trump agreed that people who are vandalizing teslas
should be treated as domestic terrorists. And that is like
a huge escalation and something that everyone really needs to
pay attention to. So you're now going to see, you know,
as people get arrested for vandalizing stores, or keying cars
(26:53):
or setting superchargers on fire, like much more aggressive prosecution.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
I thought, owners of t still, we're going to be
protected by hate crime laws. It's it's terrorism that we're going.
Speaker 4 (27:05):
What what what?
Speaker 1 (27:05):
What made me laugh a little bit was the quote
from the Attorney General Pam Bondi the other day where
she said, if you're going to touch a Tesla, go
to a dealership, do anything, you better watch out. And
I'm thinking, like that's the problem. No one's going and
touching Tesla's and going to dealerships. You need people to
go there. So it's like, of all the worries we have,
(27:27):
that shouldn't be one.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
I mean, obviously there are, like you, questions about norms
and kind of like potential executive overreach here, but like
this just calls more attention to the protests than otherwise
than I think there like you're just saying yeah. I mean, like,
I don't think this really helps e on Musk in
any way. It just it just calls attention to fact
(27:48):
that like if you shoul drive a Tesla, people are
are going to just be boiling mad all around you.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
I mean, well, Dan, I want to point out that
stock opened up. Tesla did down again this morning, testing
once again those lows that had hit last week. I
think it's been down around fifty percent or so from
the peak, the immediate post election peak, and it's down
in part because of this big BYD news overnight out
of China. BYD's now got this whole new car and
(28:17):
this new battery that you can recharge almost as quickly
as you would put fuel in a combustion car, just
five minutes. And it just strikes me. And I think
it's striking investors out there that BYD is just bringing
it and innovating day in and day out, while Tesla
sort of snoozes.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
Yeah, and you're also finally seeing like the sell side
analysts wake up and cut their estimates, so that's also
impacting the stock. But yeah, no, I mean, like Tesla
has real competition in China, which is where it gets
like forty percent of its sales, and BYD and you know,
like for so long the supercharging network has been Tesla's
(28:56):
big value add but now like the next sleep is
like even faster, and there is this sense that like
the valuation is coming back to earth. The backlash against
the brand is real. As Amanda wrote so beautifully in
her piece, analysts are waking up. Q one is going
to be a mess. You know, everyone's cutting their price
targets and their estimates, and you know, I think the
(29:18):
proxy will be worth reading too.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Okay, Now, Amanda, as Dana just summarized so well, it
is a pretty gloomy outlook out there, and for him
and for Musk in this moment, and for Tesla. You
wrote in the piece as well that Musk appears to
have completely misapprehended the symbolic value of Tesla's brand, or
at the very least, he seems to have misunderstood his
own capacity to change the nature of that value without
(29:48):
also diminishing it. So I ask you this the same
question I asked Dana last week. If Musk had to
do it all over again and he could know then
what he knows now, is he still a yes to
this whole thing?
Speaker 5 (30:03):
I think he probably is, because I think he is
like a true believer in a diologue, in the stuff
that he is doing politically right.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
The government needs to be rained in and government spending
needs to be reined in.
Speaker 5 (30:13):
Yes, I think that his larger project is this.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Doge stuff drive Tesla is zero.
Speaker 5 (30:20):
Yes, absolutely. I think that I think that he feel
he is sure enough in himself that he can find
some sort of financial upside, maybe not for Tesla, but
maybe but elsewhere that he will be fine.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
So his break he essentially from the Tesla's stock price,
there is no breaking point in the Tesla stock price
for him. Maxis, do you have a Tesla stock price
where Musk capitulates and breaks?
Speaker 4 (30:44):
And I think so.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
I think that Elon Musk, I think he and Donald
Trump will last through the midterm. But I think the
only thing that could stop that, but the thing that
could lead Musk to leave, or could lead that relationship
to break up, is not about Donald Trump getting sick
of kind of like Elon Musk hang around or whatever
other kind of hilarity ensues over in the executive branch.
It is the stock price of Tesla. It's like, if
(31:08):
it fell, it's falling about fifty percent. If it fell
another fifty fifty percent from where it is today, which
totally could happen. You look at the share price of Bid.
You're talking about how great Bid is doing. It is
worth a lot less than Tesla.
Speaker 4 (31:21):
I looked.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
I think it's you know, between one hundred and two
hundred billion. Tesla right now worth seven hundred billion. So
if that stock price were to fall further, if it
were to fall too closer to the valuation of SpaceX,
for instance, you know, round, that would make my exactlytion
below for one hundred billion. I could see Musk opting
to spend more time with his company, Like he could
(31:43):
basically maintain his alliance with Trump and go back to
Tesla and like solve potentially two problems at the same time.
Like at some point there are going to be diminishing returns.
Those are going to start to face diminishing returns where
like it gets harder to cut costs the political backlash growth,
and also like there's no reason he couldn't say, thank you,
(32:04):
mister president, You're doing a great job, but I need
to focus on my company. And he could still write
Trump hundreds of billions of dollars worth of checks.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Absolutely, And aren't you, by the way, already starting to
get diminishing returns from dos? I mean, certainly, as we
said at the very top of the show, they're in
the news a lot less than they used to be. Now.
Maybe that's just because Wow, they're just doing their business
now and the shock and all of the initial days
is pasted. Don't read too much into that or read
a lot into it. They're just not getting a whole
lot done at this point.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
I don't think we really know like in terms of
their you know, cut attempts to cut government spending, whether
they've hit diminishing returns. I think politically they are hitting
diminishing returns. You know, the reports out recently about getting
rid of phone support for social Security, Like, you're starting
to cut into things that are.
Speaker 4 (32:49):
Going to be popular with voters.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
People people who need to access social Security benefits do
not you know, they happen to be most of them
happen to be very old, and they're not necessarily the
kind of person who's like super enthusiastic about talking to
a chatbot. I am not enthusiastic about talking to a chatbot.
And you know, and I'm forty two, so like I
can only imagine somebody who has less experienced how they
feel about it.
Speaker 5 (33:12):
Yeah, and this goes back to what you were talking
about earlier. I think about the sort of Trump is
not like a win winess business partnership guy. So he
Trump has effectively gotten Elon Musk to be the face
of a lot of the things that are going to.
Speaker 4 (33:27):
Be unpopular.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
That he if he were the guy with the cudgel
in his hand, he Trump, he would be taking all
that heat instead. No, Elon, you got this, dude, go
for it.
Speaker 4 (33:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (33:42):
I think that Trump has effectively structured this whole endeavor
so that Elon Musk is the face of the stuff
that is less likely to be.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
Popular as a results of eventually the fall guy, and
not only yeah, absolutely yeah, Trump can eventually ran him
and say oh no, no, no, no, we don't want to
go that far.
Speaker 5 (34:00):
Yeah, never mind, you know, we were, We're looking at
it very strongly.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
What did Amanda? Thank you very much for joining us.
That was a terrific piece you had out today. Tesla's
gamble on Maga customers won't work. And when you have
a news story out on mister Mosk or Tesla or
any of his other companies, you shall come back and
tell us all about it.
Speaker 5 (34:23):
Thank you so much, all.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Right, Max, Dana thanks as always, Thank you for having us.
Speaker 4 (34:29):
David, thank you.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
This episode was produced by Stacy wang Anna Masa rakus
Is our editor, and Rayhan Harmanci our senior editor, Blake
Maple's handles engineering, and Dave Purcell fact checks. Our supervising
producer is Magnus Hendrickson. The Elining theme is written and
performed by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugiira. Reddon Francis Newnham
is our executive producer, and Sage Bowman is the head
(34:57):
of Bloomberg Podcasts. A thanks as always to our supporters
Joel Weber and Brad Stone. I'm David Papadopoulos. If you
have a minute, rate and review our show, it'll help
other listeners find us. See you next week.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. Let me tell you
we have a new star.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
A star is born Elon up On mars Juson Kennemy.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
He is the Thomas Edison plus plus plus of our age.
Speaker 4 (00:18):
Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
I feel for the guy.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
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 four post.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
We were meant for great things in the United States
of America, and Elon reminds.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Us of that we don't have a fourth branch of
governments called Elon Musk.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Welcome to Elon Ang, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk.
It's Tuesday, March eighteenth. I'm your host, David Papadopolis. Now
this week has mercifully given us a bit of a
break from the non stop barrage of Elon Indoze news.
But that doesn't mean things are quiet in the Musk Empire.
There's been all sorts of news on the SpaceX front,
(01:06):
and we'll start off there, and then Amanda Mall will
join us to talk about a terrific piece you just
pen for BusinessWeek about the epic brand destruction. Elon has
unleased at Tesla to talk about everything SpaceX. We have
our two regulars, Max Chafkin and Dana Hall. Maxilo to you, Hello, David, Dana,
(01:26):
how are you hello?
Speaker 4 (01:28):
Hello?
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Now, I know that I often say on this show,
I know nothing about what we're about to talk about,
but I truly and when it comes to SpaceX, I
truly know nothing about this. So you guys are going
to help me like you're going to help our listeners. Dana,
the stranded astronauts up there at the space station are
coming home courtesy of Elon. Musk tell us about it.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Well, First of all, the phrase stranded is something that
NASA has kind of pushed back on.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
They're stranded, they're stranded and miserable.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
I mean, I know that journalists love to say that
they're stranded and they're stuck, but the truth is that
they're doing research and they're there because they want to
be there. And yes, they were supposed to come home
on a Boeing Starliner craft. NASA made the decision not
to send them home on the Boeing craft, So now
they are coming home on a SpaceX Dragon capsule. And
(02:21):
this is a big win for Elon because it kind
of plays into this narrative that quote unquote SpaceX is
rescuing the astronauts, and yeah, I mean they are. They
are bringing them home, and that's a huge win for Elon.
And SpaceX has a brand as like the most reliable
way to get to and from the space station.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
NASA has, as Dana is saying, a reliable way to
get astronauts to and from the International Space Station it
is SpaceX. It is also and separately attempting to find
a second way. Now that is very annoying to Elon
Musk since he essentially has a monopoly on this business.
So as they've been developing this, Musk has been at
(02:59):
pains to spin this as some kind of huge failure,
and it is. It is definitely a setback for Boeing.
But NASA could have sent these astronauts home much sooner
if it had wanted to. It chose not to, And
as Dan is saying, they chose to be there.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Okay, fine, so you guys insist that they're not stranded,
but they are. We can agree that they are coming home.
They're not.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
They're they're traveling now, They're they're hurtling through.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
As we speak through the void of the sound over
there that I hear, is that the sound of them
hurtling through space.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
By the time listeners hear this podcast, they may splash ocean.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Yeah, so the astronauts are on their way home. I mean,
they are in the capsule and they are expected to
splash down, like Tuesday evening. They will splash down Tuesday.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Around the time this podcast splashes down as you're listening.
A splashdown is is a term that everybody loves to
use with these things. Right, there's no other way to
come back from the space station if you're not you know,
beyond splashing again.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Okay, David, you know you realize it's because they are
landing in the ocean. Like it's cost.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
I'm aware of that, but is in every case it's
separate news. Starlink, a key division of SpaceX, is getting
a competitor or Max Competitive Tours. Tell us about it, all.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Right, Yeah, so there's a bunch of stuff happening around Starlink,
and in particular around Starlink. Competitors is a new spinoff
from Alphabet, the parent company of Google, which is called.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
T A A RX.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
I guess a titara is how you say, I don't
know how to say it. It is a high speed
internet company. It does not use satellites. It uses I'm
not etting this up. It uses lasers that are mounted
on towers. Apparently they can send high speed data, very
long rate a laser, essentially like fiber optic cables, but
in the sky. And this is being spun as a
(04:56):
potential Starlink competitor. This is the thing that other technology
company have talked about. It is not a direct competitor
starting What it is is another potential way to deliver
high speed internet to people in rural areas, which is
like the main use case for Starlink. Now, I want
to say two things. One is this is like very
very speculative. The company, according to the report in the Verge,
(05:18):
which is the one that we all saw, has like
two dozen employees. Google has been trying to find ways
to provide broadband internet to rural areas for a very
long time, with.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
Very little success.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
This actually had its roots in their balloon Internet program,
which you may or may not remember.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
I don't.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
That did not end well.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
This is not how like you know you're going to
log on to Facebook and you need to.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Said that the Balloon Internet program.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Did not want Now I want to say this though
this is again very speculative, not worth banking on at
the moment.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
That said, but a window into something.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Well, it shows you number one, that there are multiple
ways for companies to go after Starlink. We often talk
about Elon Musk kind of having a monopoly, right because
he has a lot of satellites, but he doesn't have
a monopoly on Internet access because there are other ways
to deliver the Internet. You can get your Internet via
fiber rocket cable, You can get your Internet via cell
phone tower. You could even conceivably get your Internet via
(06:18):
some crazy laser.
Speaker 4 (06:19):
Things that you know. I don't know, David, make sure
I don't totally understand.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Now.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
The other thing is there are other Starlink competitors. There
are a couple of companies that are sort of legacy
satellite providers that use older technology but also provide satellite
Internet service. There is also an EU company. Yeah you
tellt Yeah, I think it's like Eutel Sat maybe really
probably the most literal name.
Speaker 4 (06:44):
For a for a company in history.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
It is a EU based satellite provider and this company
is getting a lot of buzz.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Stock has been soaring.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Yeah, it's it's been up like five times over the
last month. Over the past month. There is there is
thought that Europeans may, especially European governments, may prefer to
do business with a European space company at a time when,
of course Donald Trump is you know, taking this nationalistic
pose and Elon Musk is so closely.
Speaker 4 (07:15):
Allied with him.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
So there are these other options, and I think seeing
these other options materialize kind of hints at the ways
that this bet that Elon Musk has made on Donald
Trump could go bad. His businesses, while very strong, have vulnerabilities.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
So, Dana, we've obviously seen it again and again and
again in enormous numbers when it comes to Tesla, that
old customer base walking away from the company, and we're
going to talk about that at length again in the
back half of the show. Maybe some signs that a
little bit of that now happening potentially in the starlink space.
The Guardian, I should point out, had a piece that
(07:54):
came out yesterday or today citing some people who said
I've given up my Starlink. I would have just myself
slapped the bumper sticker on my Starlink and kept and
kept using it. But maybe some signs emerging there.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Sure, I mean, you know, I think what's funny is
that for so long, I mean in the early days,
like Tesla was the scrappy upstart taking on legacy Atto,
and you know, Starlink was the scrappy telecom company taking
on the big incumbents. And now that Elon is who
he is, doing what he's doing with the Trump administration,
the only way that consumers feel like they have political
(08:31):
agency to kind of fight back is to you know,
slap a bumper sticker or give up their product. I
mean that said, most people buy products because they like
the products, Like, yeah, you know, equally, there are a
lot of people that are probably upset with Jeff Bezos.
I'm not seeing people like vandalizing Whole Foods or canceling
Amazon in the big numbers that they're you know, virtue
(08:52):
signaling about their Tesla's.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
I just don't think right the rejection is quite is
quite a strong, but that is a good The virtue
signaling term max is important because Guardian article like actually
came out I misspoke, it came out on Sunday.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
The lead image is like a Scottish folks. It's not
exactly like he's barefoot on the beach. There must be
like three or four other people like.
Speaker 4 (09:15):
This is not necessarily a huge court.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
I do want to say, though, there are other customers
that are rethinking Starlink.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
You know, we're seeing reports out of Italy.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Remember we talked some weeks ago about the deal that
Starlink was in talks with Georgia Maloney and the Italian
government to provide. So there's now increasing opposition in Italy
over this deal. It is not a done deal and
so and we're seeing you know, the opposition parties in
Italy saying, hey, we should do this with a European player,
not with space A. You tell set, well, yeah, assumably
(09:47):
it isn't just virtue signaling, right like there are strategic
reasons why countries might not want to know it has
it can't.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
It certainly can't be virtue signaling in the same way
it is with the Tesla, because who the hell knows
what your internet is?
Speaker 5 (10:00):
Is?
Speaker 1 (10:00):
You know how you're and so it's truly you must
really when you get rid of it, you must truly
be concerned about your association with the company. If you're
Italy or as a customer, you'd be like you must
be just like I can't signal to my neighbors and
my friends and he you know, I can't send them
a message. But man, for me as a consumer, I
just really don't want to give him any money. That's
(10:21):
what it has to be. And we'll just see ultimately
how beyond that, Scotsman, how big that universe is. And
then over the weekend, Dana, we had an ex from
Elon claiming that the first SpaceX mission to Mars is
going to happen next year.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
What say you, Well, he's been saying that for a
long time, so that's not really new. What was new
was that that Optimists would be on board, right, So
the idea is that the Optimist is going to Mars
before the humans.
Speaker 4 (10:47):
You don't need a life support system, right, true.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
So it just sort of shows once again how like
all of his products and all everything that he's doing,
it's all in the service of Mars, right Like the
boring company tunnels are all about Mars. Optimist is gonna
work on Mars, and he's excited about it because you know,
he's now got this relationship with Trump, Trump wants to
go to Mars by the end of his first term.
I mean, this is the whole enchilada. It's all about Mars.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
I think there's a second reason why he's talking about
I mean, I take Danna's point that, you know, freelon
Mars is the whole enchilada. But also, and we'll get
to this in the next segment, Tesla stock is collapsing
right now. Optimist is a Tesla product. He has used
SpaceX in the past to provide marketing Tesla. That's what
that's in part what this is. Right Saying he's gonna
(11:35):
send Optimists to Mars is a way to potentially remind
Tesla investors like I've got this really awesome robot called Optimists,
and you know it's gonna be worth thirty trillion dollars
or whatever. The other thing I want to say, there
is no Mars program. Not only does does starship does
it not appear to be technically ready or anywhere near
(11:55):
ready to do the things that Elon is saying.
Speaker 4 (11:58):
NASA hasn't agreed to that. The thing that starts.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
But being under Trump, if Musk really wants to go
to Mars asap is NASA. I'm not going to say yes.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
I think we assume that Donald Trump will be in
favor of that. I don't think we know how the
politics of that are going to work. There are other
constituents here, there are other defense contractors, there are voters
in the states where those defense contractors operate, on many
which are red states. There's going to be a lot
of political opposition to like taking money away from one
(12:30):
NASA program and putting in another. And there would also
be a lot of opposition to just like taking money
away from what like Social Security employees or something. I mean,
I'm not saying cut, I'm gonna say from not saying recipients.
I'm saying they are cutting a huge, huge numbers of
staff from the Social Security Administration and many other administrations.
(12:52):
And one of the things that Elon Musk has said
he thinks that we should do with that money is
put into a MARS program. So, like, I don't know
why that's far fetched. That is that is kind of like.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
What he said he in that case, and that is
a political a tough sell politically.
Speaker 4 (13:05):
I'll say.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Now, the other thing is they would need to make
this starship do a lot more things than it has
already done. I mean, when Elon Musk went on the
Rogan podcast, there was a lengthy discussion about the heat
shield on the Starship spacecraft, and it is not working yet.
It is a novel design that they have not figured out.
And that is among several problems that are sort of novel,
(13:29):
including attempting to refuel this thing in space. There's a
lot of questions about how many launches it'll take.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Will there will be some sort of refueling vessel waiting
for it up in space something.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
That is the plan. So so he's going to launch
the just to get to the Moon.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
The plan is he's going to launch Starship, and then
there are going to be a succession of many fuel launch.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Like water stations in a marathon, like.
Speaker 4 (13:54):
Water stations in America.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
You know how tricky that can be. Grab the water
to watch.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Sometimes it gets dropped on you. But and in space
sometimes the fuel just gets boiled off and disappears. So
there are lots of issues. Again, it's not not to
say that these issues are going to be impossible. It's
just like acting like this is a done deal either
technically or politically, is you know, bordering on delusional.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Okay, let's move on to Tesla. Okay. We're now joined
by Amanda mal a writer for Business Week. Amanda, thanks
for joining us, Thanks for having me, Amanda. You just
published today a terrific piece about Tesla and the brand
destruction that Elon has wrought there, and there was a
(14:39):
line that really jumped out at me and I wanted
to ask you about it. You wrote that it's nearly
impossible to think of a comparable example of a company
detonating its own brand. Tell us about that. We've debated
this a little bit on the show before, and we
were wondering what kind of historical comparisons there were, and
you found none.
Speaker 5 (15:01):
Yeah, Like, I've written about consumerism and branding and marketing
for a long time, and what Tesla is doing with
its customer base and its market positioning and it's branding
right now is something that you know, I sort of
stumped me for an analog in the history of consumption,
because you know, brands pivot all the time. They seek
(15:22):
to change their markets, they seek to expand their markets,
they seek to find new kinds of customers. They do
that in all sorts of ways, but very, very rarely
is that done through telling almost their entire existing customer
base that like not own yes to essentially go, you know,
f themselves. And that is quite literally what Elon has
(15:45):
done with the current Tesla customer base, which is overwhelmingly
left of center people not necessarily libs or progressives, but
like people who are concerned about the environment and willing
to change their habits and make a very large purchase
to sort of like put their money where their mouth.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
And was he fully aware do you believe at just
how much he was going to turn them away when
he made this pivot, or was is he surprised at all?
Speaker 5 (16:10):
I think Elon currently seems concerned about this pivot and
what it's doing to Tesla sales, what it's doing to
Tesla's share price. I think you can see that in
the sort of car show that they put on at
the White House last week. I don't know what he expected, Like,
it's very hard for me to put myself in his
sort of mindset going into this, because I think any
(16:32):
anybody who works in branding or marketing would tell you
that this is like what would happen when you changed
the identity of the company from something that sort of
flatters the sensibilities of progressives and people who are interested
in the environment and in staving off climate change to
something that is, you know, supportive of climate change, supportive
of antagonizing that customer base.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
On that antagonizing point, there was a moment on the
Stephen Colbert Show last week that kind have captured this
a bit. Let us understand that in general, the Colbert
Live audience is a progressive, wealthy, uh East Coast crowd,
give or take. I'm sure there's some tourists in all tourists,
(17:15):
but are they not.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
It's probably left of center, given that Colbert's left of center,
But my guess is it's like more centrist than than
like the regular cross section of New York.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
All right, well, let's let's listen to that clip. Well,
there was a silver lining on the implosion of the
world economy. It's bad for Elon Musk too. Yesterday, Well.
Speaker 4 (17:39):
That is not great for sales.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Wow wow, Now, Max, What struck me having watched it
last week was uh, just how raw it sort of
felt from the crowd and how much Colbert and and
the with him, we're sort of shocked by the extent
(18:03):
of the reaction. And yeah, it's it's a thing.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Yeah, I mean, I think they're two misunderstandings, and Amanda
has kind of hinted at both of them. One is
the sort of misunderstanding of his own customer base and
like what they were excited about, what their politics look like,
and how they felt about Donald trumpor would feel about
Donald Trump. And the second, frankly, is a misunderstanding of
(18:30):
Donald Trump's voters and how enthusiastic they are to buy
electric vehicles or to you know, participate in the fandom
of somebody that does what looks like to most saying
people a Nazi salute, right Like, most people, including most Republicans,
do not like that stuff. They don't like the like
(18:50):
trolling version of Elon Musk. And you see that in
the poll numbers. Musk's poll numbers are worse than Donald
Trump's pull numbers, which is pretty amazing, honestly, considering that
Musk was a very popular figure just a couple of
years ago, beloved essentially and admired by people of both parties,
and he has managed to just like blow past even
(19:12):
one of the most divisive people, you know, public figures,
you know, in the world.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Yeah, am I talking with some of my friends who
are members of MAGA, and I've raised with them and
I've said, what do you think about this, you know,
buying a Tesla, And I think that the sentiment has
been no chance in hell has essentially been what I've
heard back now, Amanda on that White House lawn sales
(19:41):
pitch that we saw last week Musk and Trump and
there's this whole fleet of Tesla's, of all colors and
shapes and sizes. You wrote in the piece that to
you it reeks of desperation. Is that what this is
here and that it is not going to be an
elixir of sorts for the brand.
Speaker 5 (20:04):
Yes, I think that when you see a stunt like that,
My reading of it was that Elon understands that, like
his his traditional consumer is not interested in associating with
what he's now associated the brand with and what these
protests have very effectively further associated the brand with, and
he understands it seems that he needs to find some
(20:27):
sort of other like Polish for this situation, and so
he went to Donald Trump, which who was divisive but
extremely popular among a large swamp of the population, and
it was essentially trying to more explicitly hook Tesla up
to not just his own cult of personality, but to
Donald Trump's. And I think that it probably worked for
(20:50):
like some small number of people who were really, really
in tune to, you know, signals coming from Trump himself.
But like most of Trump's voter are not fully bought
in ideologues to the weirdest parts of internet right wing thought.
They are regular people who, like Max SAIDs don't necessarily
want to be associated with a lot of the things
(21:13):
that Elon Musk explicitly associates himself with. Like people who
want to own the Libs through their car purchases have
like a wealth of options. They have all kinds of
trucks and SUVs.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
And buying a Model three is not that is not
how you achieve it.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
I remember that ad that which we talked about. I
showed this demanda before we started taping. But Dan, I'll remember,
well America Pack ran these ads that were like, the
Libs don't want you to buys to like take zin
or eat red meat or buy a truck.
Speaker 4 (21:40):
And you see a picture of a truck, it's not
a cyber truck. It's a gag.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Well, we Man and I were trying to figure out
what it was, but we couldn't figure out. It may
have been a rock generated truck, but in any case,
it was definitively not a cyber truck like you can
buy as a man of center piece.
Speaker 4 (21:55):
You can buy like a V eight, you know, or whatever.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
You can buy a F two fifty and on the
libs that way fifty big you can if you really
want to commit. But but in any case, like there's
just you know, it's it's just not clear that like
the pitch of Sustainable Transport has found purchase with that.
Speaker 5 (22:17):
He's in a really he's in a really crowded market
for symbols of owning the libs via you know, vehicular manner.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Okay, but but he does he is quite good at
owning the libs, though in general perhaps not via via
vehicle uh sales. Now, Dan, I want to raise this
with you though, because there was a Washington Post story
that came out in the last couple of days that
says that Google search increases or Internet search increases in
Red America for quote by a Tesla are way up.
(22:47):
And then they cite a bunch of politicians and sorts
no buyers to be They don't cite a single buyer,
but they have a bunch of politicians sort of really
pushing in the wake of the White House lawn ship
the Tesla brand. We are from where you sit your
dubious this is going to go anywhere. I mean, there
(23:07):
are showrooms, by the way, I looked up in red America.
There are showrooms in Meridian, Idaho, and Council Bluffs, Iowa,
and Strongsville, Ohio, and Chattanooga, Tennessee. They're not rushing to
those dealerships to buy musks.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
Shift to the right and the effort to kind of
pitch Tesla as a car to middle America began quite
a while ago when the company moved its headquarters from
California to Texas. And you know, if you look at Tesla,
like the mission of the company is about accelerating clean energy,
but they really market the car as just being like
(23:39):
a cool tech car. Right. So they've been aware that
there has always been a ceiling to the number of
liberal clostal consumers who were going to buy a Tesla.
They knew that they had to kind of reach out
to red state America a long time ago, which is
part of why they moved to Texas, which is part
of why they came out with the cyber truck. But
that said, the infrastructure for EVS in Middle America is
(24:01):
still not as strong, and like the state incentives are
not as strong as they are in places like California
and Colorado. That said, like Texas is a big state
for EVS, and there are a lot of people who
drive Tesla's in Texas. It's all Texas and Florida. So like,
I think people have the wrong impression that you know,
EV penetration is you know, blue state only. It's actually
(24:23):
the penetration is warm state. Texas and Florida are huge
EV states. So this shift has been going on for
quite some time and predates Trump selection.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
You know that that made for TV infomercial thing and
talking about the white on the White House lawn. You know,
I think if you watched it, it wasn't a great
ad for Tesla. It was a great piece of content
for Donald Trump because well it was. It was really
entertaining and really fun. It had this moment where Trump
got in the model atque computer Everything's computer. Yeah, it's
(24:58):
all computer.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
This is a different panel that I've had.
Speaker 5 (25:02):
Everything's computer, that's.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Beautiful and and like that was a viral moment, and
and it just really had the contours of like of
a reality show, like an episode of The Apprentice that' said,
the actual like sales pitch was kind of buried in
a middle like a press conference, a bunch of Trump's antics.
And then the whole point of this thing was that
Trump was gonna buy a car, which he barely did
in the thing. You watch the thing right that Trump
(25:27):
gets in the car, he takes a bunch of questions.
Half an hour goes by, then he starts saying his goodbyes.
He says, oh, thank you, Elon, thank you. Every Then
the reporters are like, mister President, what car are you
gonna buy? And he just like flips around and kind
of casually goes like, oh, that one. And it doesn't
look like a considered purchase, doesn't look like something he's
truly excited about. And I think this gets to a
(25:47):
more profound problem with Elon Musk, which is that he
is now in a sort of relationship, a business relationship
with Donald Trump, who is not somebody who is really
all about kind of win win partner ships. And I
think it's pretty clear that Donald Trump is doing very
well in this partnership.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
You know.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
After this event, the New York Times reported that Elon
Musk had agreed to give another one hundred million dollars
to donate another one hundred million dollars to Donald Trump's Superpack.
Not his own superpack, because Muscle is putting money into
that for the Wisconsin State Supreme Court, but an additional
one hundred million bucks for Trump to spend as he pleases.
Trump is doing really well here. And again I don't
(26:27):
know that Elon Musk got his hundred million dollars worth
in that event.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
Well, the other thing that was significant about that event
was that Trump agreed that people who are vandalizing teslas
should be treated as domestic terrorists. And that is like
a huge escalation and something that everyone really needs to
pay attention to. So you're now going to see, you know,
as people get arrested for vandalizing stores, or keying cars
(26:53):
or setting superchargers on fire, like much more aggressive prosecution.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
I thought, owners of t still, we're going to be
protected by hate crime laws. It's it's terrorism that we're going.
Speaker 4 (27:05):
What what what?
Speaker 1 (27:05):
What made me laugh a little bit was the quote
from the Attorney General Pam Bondi the other day where
she said, if you're going to touch a Tesla, go
to a dealership, do anything, you better watch out. And
I'm thinking, like that's the problem. No one's going and
touching Tesla's and going to dealerships. You need people to
go there. So it's like, of all the worries we have,
(27:27):
that shouldn't be one.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
I mean, obviously there are, like you, questions about norms
and kind of like potential executive overreach here, but like
this just calls more attention to the protests than otherwise
than I think there like you're just saying yeah. I mean, like,
I don't think this really helps e on Musk in
any way. It just it just calls attention to fact
(27:48):
that like if you shoul drive a Tesla, people are
are going to just be boiling mad all around you.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
I mean, well, Dan, I want to point out that
stock opened up. Tesla did down again this morning, testing
once again those lows that had hit last week. I
think it's been down around fifty percent or so from
the peak, the immediate post election peak, and it's down
in part because of this big BYD news overnight out
of China. BYD's now got this whole new car and
(28:17):
this new battery that you can recharge almost as quickly
as you would put fuel in a combustion car, just
five minutes. And it just strikes me. And I think
it's striking investors out there that BYD is just bringing
it and innovating day in and day out, while Tesla
sort of snoozes.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
Yeah, and you're also finally seeing like the sell side
analysts wake up and cut their estimates, so that's also
impacting the stock. But yeah, no, I mean, like Tesla
has real competition in China, which is where it gets
like forty percent of its sales, and BYD and you know,
like for so long the supercharging network has been Tesla's
(28:56):
big value add but now like the next sleep is
like even faster, and there is this sense that like
the valuation is coming back to earth. The backlash against
the brand is real. As Amanda wrote so beautifully in
her piece, analysts are waking up. Q one is going
to be a mess. You know, everyone's cutting their price
targets and their estimates, and you know, I think the
(29:18):
proxy will be worth reading too.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Okay, Now, Amanda, as Dana just summarized so well, it
is a pretty gloomy outlook out there, and for him
and for Musk in this moment, and for Tesla. You
wrote in the piece as well that Musk appears to
have completely misapprehended the symbolic value of Tesla's brand, or
at the very least, he seems to have misunderstood his
own capacity to change the nature of that value without
(29:48):
also diminishing it. So I ask you this the same
question I asked Dana last week. If Musk had to
do it all over again and he could know then
what he knows now, is he still a yes to
this whole thing?
Speaker 5 (30:03):
I think he probably is, because I think he is
like a true believer in a diologue, in the stuff
that he is doing politically right.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
The government needs to be rained in and government spending
needs to be reined in.
Speaker 5 (30:13):
Yes, I think that his larger project is this.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Doge stuff drive Tesla is zero.
Speaker 5 (30:20):
Yes, absolutely. I think that I think that he feel
he is sure enough in himself that he can find
some sort of financial upside, maybe not for Tesla, but
maybe but elsewhere that he will be fine.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
So his break he essentially from the Tesla's stock price,
there is no breaking point in the Tesla stock price
for him. Maxis, do you have a Tesla stock price
where Musk capitulates and breaks?
Speaker 4 (30:44):
And I think so.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
I think that Elon Musk, I think he and Donald
Trump will last through the midterm. But I think the
only thing that could stop that, but the thing that
could lead Musk to leave, or could lead that relationship
to break up, is not about Donald Trump getting sick
of kind of like Elon Musk hang around or whatever
other kind of hilarity ensues over in the executive branch.
It is the stock price of Tesla. It's like, if
(31:08):
it fell, it's falling about fifty percent. If it fell
another fifty fifty percent from where it is today, which
totally could happen. You look at the share price of Bid.
You're talking about how great Bid is doing. It is
worth a lot less than Tesla.
Speaker 4 (31:21):
I looked.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
I think it's you know, between one hundred and two
hundred billion. Tesla right now worth seven hundred billion. So
if that stock price were to fall further, if it
were to fall too closer to the valuation of SpaceX,
for instance, you know, round, that would make my exactlytion
below for one hundred billion. I could see Musk opting
to spend more time with his company, Like he could
(31:43):
basically maintain his alliance with Trump and go back to
Tesla and like solve potentially two problems at the same time.
Like at some point there are going to be diminishing returns.
Those are going to start to face diminishing returns where
like it gets harder to cut costs the political backlash growth,
and also like there's no reason he couldn't say, thank you,
(32:04):
mister president, You're doing a great job, but I need
to focus on my company. And he could still write
Trump hundreds of billions of dollars worth of checks.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Absolutely, And aren't you, by the way, already starting to
get diminishing returns from dos? I mean, certainly, as we
said at the very top of the show, they're in
the news a lot less than they used to be. Now.
Maybe that's just because Wow, they're just doing their business
now and the shock and all of the initial days
is pasted. Don't read too much into that or read
a lot into it. They're just not getting a whole
lot done at this point.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
I don't think we really know like in terms of
their you know, cut attempts to cut government spending, whether
they've hit diminishing returns. I think politically they are hitting
diminishing returns. You know, the reports out recently about getting
rid of phone support for social Security, Like, you're starting
to cut into things that are.
Speaker 4 (32:49):
Going to be popular with voters.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
People people who need to access social Security benefits do
not you know, they happen to be most of them
happen to be very old, and they're not necessarily the
kind of person who's like super enthusiastic about talking to
a chatbot. I am not enthusiastic about talking to a chatbot.
And you know, and I'm forty two, so like I
can only imagine somebody who has less experienced how they
feel about it.
Speaker 5 (33:12):
Yeah, and this goes back to what you were talking
about earlier. I think about the sort of Trump is
not like a win winess business partnership guy. So he
Trump has effectively gotten Elon Musk to be the face
of a lot of the things that are going to.
Speaker 4 (33:27):
Be unpopular.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
That he if he were the guy with the cudgel
in his hand, he Trump, he would be taking all
that heat instead. No, Elon, you got this, dude, go
for it.
Speaker 4 (33:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (33:42):
I think that Trump has effectively structured this whole endeavor
so that Elon Musk is the face of the stuff
that is less likely to be.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
Popular as a results of eventually the fall guy, and
not only yeah, absolutely yeah, Trump can eventually ran him
and say oh no, no, no, no, we don't want to
go that far.
Speaker 5 (34:00):
Yeah, never mind, you know, we were, We're looking at
it very strongly.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
What did Amanda? Thank you very much for joining us.
That was a terrific piece you had out today. Tesla's
gamble on Maga customers won't work. And when you have
a news story out on mister Mosk or Tesla or
any of his other companies, you shall come back and
tell us all about it.
Speaker 5 (34:23):
Thank you so much, all.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Right, Max, Dana thanks as always, Thank you for having us.
Speaker 4 (34:29):
David, thank you.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
This episode was produced by Stacy wang Anna Masa rakus
Is our editor, and Rayhan Harmanci our senior editor, Blake
Maple's handles engineering, and Dave Purcell fact checks. Our supervising
producer is Magnus Hendrickson. The Elining theme is written and
performed by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugiira. Reddon Francis Newnham
is our executive producer, and Sage Bowman is the head
(34:57):
of Bloomberg Podcasts. A thanks as always to our supporters
Joel Weber and Brad Stone. I'm David Papadopoulos. If you
have a minute, rate and review our show, it'll help
other listeners find us. See you next week.
Host
David Papadopoulos
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