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Let me tell you we have a new star.
A star is born Elon On mars Juson Kennedy. He is the Thomas Edison plus plus plus of our age.
Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity. I feel for the guy. I would say ninety eight percent really appreciate what he does. But those two percent that are nasty, they are. I'll be in four post. We are meant for great things in the United States of America, and Elon reminds us.
Of that we don't have a fourth branch of governments called Elon Musk.
Welcome to Elanik Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk. It's Tuesday, March fourth. I'm your host, David Papadopolis. So as Elon has been exploring his new life as a government worker at the share price of his publicly traded company, Tesla has been on a wild ride. The stock skyrocketed after Trump's selection, but recently it's been in freefall and Elon
is become increasingly the target for Democrat protesters. Every weekend, more people have showed up at Tesla dealerships across the US marching, chanting, vandalizing, and overseas it might even be worse. Tesla sales have collapsed in Europe. Could the Trump trade be a bad deal for Elon and his investors? And then we'll look at some new feuds. Finally, some new
feuds appearing on the horizon. For Elon. It's no longer the tech CEOs that he's beefing with, they've pretty much all fallen in line behind him and Trump, but instead its entire international alliances. And lastly we hear some truly wild state of the Union Elon predictions. So to discuss all things Tesla, we are joined by the Bloomberg Global Autos are in London, Craig Trudell. Craig Hello there, sir, Hello, and we have our regulars of course, as always with
us here Max Chafkin in the studio with me. Max, Hey, David, and Dana Hall beaming in from California. Dana, Hello, Hey, David. Okay, So for all of you some numbers first, to get a bit of a perspective about just how crazy this ride has been. From the run up to the election back in the summer to the post election peak. The Tesla stock price almost tripled just it was in an
absolute tear. Since that peak, it's been pretty darn ugly down over two hundred dollars per share, a drop of nearly fifty percent, much of it coming since the inauguration, and the stock is now essentially back at the level it was on election Day. It's plummeting again today, down roughly seven percent or so this morning, as we're recording part of a broader route across markets here in the wake of the Trump tariffs. But also there were some
really bad sales numbers for Tesla out of China overnight. Now, Craig, you've seen a lot of wild gyrations during your time covering Kesla, but even by those standards, this is pretty dramatic. What the hell is going on here?
I think we're seeing a dramatic rethinking of whether it's such a good thing that Elon Musk has so emphatically thrown his dark Maga hat in with President Trump.
So I mean, I remember, again at the very beginning, Craig, the market was adamant that it was a brilliant idea. The market bid the stock up furiously in the first couple of weeks after the election.
Absolutely, I think the instant analysis, the sort of knee jerk reaction to this was, how can it possibly be a bad thing to be incredibly close to the most powerful person in the world, to essentially, you know, be his first buddy, to be his cabinet mate. I think everybody, I'm sure was clear eyed months ago that you know, Trump was not necessarily, you know, wildly popular. He's very polarizing.
But I think if you told people in October or early November that Trump and Musk were going to do some of the things they've done in the first I think we're six weeks in now of this presidency, you know, people would have said, you know, you've got Trump derangement syndrome. I think they've been really really aggressive, very sort of stick it in your face, and I think we are seeing, you know, you can't really sort of take it out on SpaceX, right. I suppose you can leave X or Twitter.
A lot of people have already done that. If you really want to stick it to elon you, you stick it to his most valuable company that has cars all over the place. And we're seeing that, We're seeing, you know, dozens of protests across the US. I think we're also seeing you know, even some of of Tesla's own customers putting different companies' badges onto their cars so that people think they're driving them Mazda or a BMW instead of a Model three.
It's it's wait, wait a minute, wait a minute, tell me more about that. How does that? A? How exactly does that work? And B does it work? Is someone like, oh, that's a nice Mazda. And by the way, who wants a nice Maza? Hey, don maza clugged my Mazda. You just wait a minute. So you turned your Tesla into a Masa? Is that what you're saying?
No, no, no, no, sir.
But but I mean, I think it's a pretty simple deal of of you sort of you know, chip off your your t dcal off of the back of your vehicle.
You put on a different badge.
Those you know, you can buy those in the aftermarket pretty cheaply, and you just hope people don't notice.
But that they're not thrown by the by the body type of the car.
There is a cyber truck that is around here around our office in New York.
You thought it was a four F one.
No, it has a old school Toyota logo of a tailgate. And I don't think they're trying to trick anybody, but I do think it looks kind of cool.
That is that is there you go, Max on Craig's point that he made at the beginning, you know, when we had that wild run up in November and into early December, I actually believe if you pull the tape on this show, we said, this seems like a fine idea in the abstract, like is a very you know, an investing thesis, like you know, yeah, his first buddy
super close to power as an abstract investing thesis. It sort of seemed like it worked, but we did keep saying, well, what the hell does that look like in the nitty gritty.
One hundred percent? And I've made this point before, but like, the main rationale for the run up in the price was that somehow Donald Trump was going to be good for Elon Musk's robotaxi ambitions, but it was not at all clear how he would be good. Like if Donald Trump like waves a magic wand and legalizes like cyber trucks for cybercabs, yeah, you still got to produce, you gotta make one, and they still haven't done that, and so that's a problem. And then I do think what
Craig is saying is true. Right, the sort of volume of and sort of the energy from Musk is more aggressive than we would have expected, maybe more polarizing than we expected. I also think that what Musk is doing is cutting against his own brand in ways that are
very harmful. Not just not just because Tesla has a lot of left wing customers and those customers are now very mad and they want to protest or cover up the Tesla logos, but also because Musk's personal brand and like what made him appealing was like inventing stuff and coming up with And now obviously there are you can debate just how much inventing he actually did or whatever, But this is a guy who's made his thing creating new products, and all of a sudden he's sort of
couse playing as one of the consultants from office Space. I mean to the point where he's like literally wearing it as a slogan, almost forgetting that those guys were not cool in office space, like people do not necessarily. So in addition to all the polarization, you also so just have this kind of like brand confusion and all along. And I'm sure Dan is about to say this, but Tesla's actual sales, the actual numbers that are coming out of this company have been bad.
Yeah, I mean, and to Max's point, he's sort of, you know, flinging around a chainsaw and really embracing this role as this destroyer of the federal government and like moving fast and breaking things and firing people. And let me tell you, people do not buy cars when they're worried about the economy, when they're worried about losing their job, when they are worried about interest rates, when they're worried about their four oh one k going up in smoke.
Yeah, it's been a pretty brutal sell off, yes, yeah.
And to be clear, and Craig knows as well, the first quarter is always like the worst for car sales typically, right, Like, you know, there's a lot of incentives to clear out inventory at the end of the year, so the fourth quarter is typically very strong. The first quarter is typically
very slow. But what you're seeing out of the Tesla numbers now is like despite all of these incentives, free supercharging and YadA YadA, like they are not moving metal and their lineup is really old and the cyber truck sales are very weak. And it's not just in the United States where musk is very polarizing, it's in Europe and it's in China. Like those are the big three markets. So the first quarter is going to be super ugly.
If we can go back also, and I hate to talk up myself here, but if you go to the year end clips max, Okay, when everybody may prediction, no, I made a lot of bad, bad predictions, including my Kentucky Derby pick, which isn't looking good at all. But I did predict a convergence in the valuations of Tesla and SpaceX, and man, if you would put that trade on, if you'd gone short Tesla long SpaceX, holy smokes, you'd be retiring. It's looking good.
I mean, I think we're there's still quite a gap between the you know, reported valuation of SpaceX and the current valuation of Tesla. You know, nearly four hundred billion for SpaceX, a little more than eight hundred billion for Tesla last I checked. But still they've that gap has closed. And I think the issue is, you know, Craig brought this up, but like being the first buddy is great
and I think it really impressed investor. But the problem is that is an unpaid position, and and to monetize that position, Elon Musk has limited options, Like there are ways that SpaceX SpaceX can monetize Musk's access. Tesla has really struggled. And there was this, like, you know, this weird story that we talked about weeks ago on the podcast about the State Department maybe putting an item in a spreadsheet saying was gonna buy four hundred million dollars worth of cyber trucks and.
That'll but even so, that ain't much, number one, That's not much, and we're and that is sort of turning into like a mini scandal.
Earlier today or yesterday, Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal sent a letter basically saying, we need.
To explain this.
You see, like it's gonna be hard for Musk to to monetize this without creating even more.
From the Tesla side.
From the Tesla side, but you know, I think even from the SpaceX side, frankly, I think, but I think it's easier from the space SpaceX has a much easier so hard.
To monetize there. But but dan As Craig was alluding to earlier It's really easy because Tesla is such a you know, a is a is a consumer product for consumers to take it out on the brand in a way that you know, SpaceX is largely shielded from that, right, you cannot punish it.
I mean, I suppose you, if you were really angry, you could like show up at the beach in Boca Chica and try to like swing by in your boat with a protest sign or fly a bunch of drones or something. But but yeah, I mean the thing about Tesla showrooms is that they are in visible locations in congressional districts all across the country. And you know this whole quote unquote Tesla takedown protests. It's like a very easy way for like the average citizen to participate in
something visible and the anchor is really about Doge. I mean, I went to the one in Berkeley a couple of weeks ago, and you know, it's all these people. Some of them owned Teslas, some of them didn't, but they're very upset about what Trump and Musk are doing Visa VI Doge. And you can like go to the showroom and then you can go out to lunch like this is like the way that a lot of people are participating.
But I think you know, the other thing to just remember about Tesla and sales is that Elon's politics aside, the company has a really stale lineup. The cyber truck is not doing well, so that is like the main thing. Like there are a lot of other electric vehicles on the market now and if you care about climate and want to buy an EV Tesla is no longer the game and talent.
Well guess because Musk kind of bet on this idea that he didn't need to refresh the lineup, like he thought that cars were essentially like software, you could just update him the iPhone pretty much looks the same as it's always you know, it's always looked, and that, you know, basically the halo around the company was going to lift it and make it possible to basically have an iPhone of cars. Like if you look way back before we started hearing the Robotaxi story, that was the extreme bowl
case for Tesla. It was that it was going to change the paradigm of the car business.
The hardware didn't matter anymore. All that mattered was a solid That.
Story was like really dependent on the Elon Musk brand on Elon Musk as this innovator, as this as this guy who was bringing the world to this world of abundance and cleaner technology and all those things, and now he stands, you know, for something else. And it seems like Elon Musk is trying, at least to some extent, to address this.
You know.
He went on Joe Rogan's podcast again, over three hours long. Again, it's kind of my day on Friday was just sort of waiting for the guillotine to fall, you know, I have to drop everything and listen to this. But anyway, it really seemed like the point of the interview. They talked, they talked, they hit all the usual Rogan topics. They talked about flying saucers, they talked about is there a
secret repulsion system. I can't remember if they hit ancient aliens or not, but I would be just absolutely shocked if they didn't somehow. But it seemed like the real point of the appearance was essentially to deny that he had made a Nazi salute at the inauguration. Rogan kind of backed him up on that. They moved on from
it very quickly. It didn't it wasn't didn't feel super enthusiastic on Rogan's part, but they sort of got through it, and it really seemed like an effort to address some of these slogans that are being chanted by protesters, as well as the ad campaign we talked about the other day, you know, where people were putting up these posters say calling the Tesla a swastikar, in reference, of course to Elon Musk's gesture at the inauguration, which he said was not a Nazi salute.
For the record, right now, Craig, back to you. Give us the latest update on sales numbers out of Europe. I know they were starting to look gram they're really Graham.
We have.
Have we had any fresh reports in recent days?
Yeah, I mean I do want to just quickly, you know, go back to when Dana was talking about how the first quarter is always seasonally really slow for Tesla but also for the industry. Last year, the first quarter was really crummy for Tesla. So not only are the numbers I'm about to share not good, but they're sort of,
you know, off of an already depressing level. And so you know, in January we saw a forty five percent drop across Europe just for that month, some of the biggest markets in Europe, you know, down sixty three percent in France, down fifty nine percent in Germany. In February, we are just starting to get reports for a couple of the biggest markets in France down twenty six percent, So I guess that's you know, you know, incrementally some improvement, but that's still you know, year to date is a
pretty ugly figure. They're down dramatically in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. And we'll get some figures from Germany and the UK on Wednesday. And then I think we mentioned already in China. You know, the wholesales figures out of China.
Yeah, yeah, now explain those numbers. So those are different than the numbers you were just describing out of Europe, is that right.
Yeah, that's right.
So in Europe we're talking about registrations, so that's actually you know, cars being registered and handed over to consumers. In terms of in China, these wholesales, this is basically shipments from the factory that Tesla has in Shanghai. So this is more akin to production than it is retail sales. And so I do think one point that we absolutely have to mention is that there is this real question of how much of this is elon sort of self owning and how much of this is.
A model why issue?
And we should note that as stale as the lineup is that the company is giving a facelift to the Model Y that is far and away their most important vehicle, and you know, having a multi week shutdown of the Model Y was a big factor in why wholesales were
down forty nine percent in February. The question, of course is how much of that is you know, disruption and the time it takes to rent back up from that disruption, and how much of it is also you know, not feeling the need to crank out as many Model threes because that hasn't been in strong demand.
That production is both for sale in China and then for export to some of their export markets, including Europe, including Europe, right I see now, Dan, So while all this is happening, while the stock is giving it up in a big way, Must came out in recent days and eked a not a forecast, but in ambition they hope and aspiration that the stock would rise to seven hundred dollars over in coming years a rally of one thousand percent Dana Hall, and I'm like, hmm, this seems
like the old Carnival Barker at work here.
Yeah. I mean he's sort of said this before. I mean he said multiple times that, like, Tesla has the potential to be the most valuable company in the world, and it's going to pend depend on strong it's execution, but he's optimistic that there's a path to get there. Blah blah blah. I mean, it's all about Tesla as an AI company. And I think the truth is Elon Busk is bored of cars, like he is bored of building cars. The future of the company is all about
the Robotaxi. We reported last week exclusively that Tesla has applied for a permit to kind of get into the right hailing business in California. They have not They have not talked at all about really their future product lineup. Like they're supposed to be coming out with a more affordable version. People think it's like a decontented Model Y, or maybe it's a cheaper car, or maybe it's just
the robotaxi. But there hasn't been a lot of visibility into like what their product pipeline is they showed off like a van at some point we have heard anything else about the van. So just this whole idea that this is a car company with like a whole product cycle of cars. They're not talking about that. Elon is only talking about AI and Grock and Doge. And he's been in Washington, d C. Basically since the election. He's been in DC or Texas or mar Alago.
Yeah, you know, he indeed is acting, as you said, like a board car maker. And you know, Max, it reminds me of an old Gabrielle Garcia Marquez line, which is a board writer makes for a board reader. And in this case, yea, I would say a board car maker makes for a board car driver. You know, it seems like between the you know, the political pushback against him and the fact that he doesn't really seem to much care about cars right now, is not a great mix.
Yeah, one hundred percent. And even I think part of the problem here with the stock is that, in addition to the sales problems that we've been talking about, in addition to the challenges with the lineup that you're kind of bringing up, they're behind on robotaxis. So even if Elon Musk hits this very ambitious goal of launching a robotaxi service in Austin, Texas in June, he's behind today
or yesterday. This week, you know, Uber and Weimo announced that they've they've been testing Weimo's been testing in Austin for some time. They are going to open Weaimo up to customers shortly so, so they've gotten beat to that market. They're not going to be the first one of that market.
And even the kind of novelty of the robotaxi we're seeing in China bid giving away, it's basically equivalent of Tesla FSD, the so called full self driving system for free right, Like, it's not clear that these technologies that he has said are going to be worth you know, thirty trillion dollars or something crazy, are actually going to be worth that that they're going to be worth that to consumers. It isn't working out that way for the companies that are already in these markets.
Okay, we're gonna wrap it up there with you, Craig. I would just say a couple of final thoughts. One is, as my son has often pointed out to us, we are a contrarian indicator here. So every time we talk about the stock collapsing in a big way, it immediately rebounds. Everybody should brace for the rebound. But Craig, we want you back on when you convert your Mazda to a Tesla. Take a picture of it, okay, and send it over and then and then we'll get you on and we'll interview about that.
I'm gonna convert my Honda Odyssey to a cyber truck just to be I like it.
I changed over my Masta because I knew Elon was crazy.
That's exactly it, Craig, talk soon.
Thanks.
Okay, mister Chaffkin. You have some feuds to report, but kind of weird feuds. It's big, high concept feuds.
Well, Elon Musk, I haven't actually checked the data, and I'm sure we will do this at some point, but he seems like he's been more active on X than ever, or as active as ever, and and yet it's it's so many feuds that it's easy to even lose them.
The first one I want to start with, I feel like we went from a dearth of feud we had a few drought to all of a sudden, you feel like they're all over the place. Again you see feuds everywhere.
Yeah, they're everywhere, and so many feuds in fact that he is feuding with abstract concepts.
So this, so this is and this is.
The most important feud I think going on right now. It is not just because Elon has been exing about it and so on, but because it it you know, it affects all of us. It is Elon Musk and GDP, the the the concept of gross domestic.
Place wrestling with gross domestic product.
He has said, I think more than once that he thinks it's a like a not a good statistic because it it includes government spending. If you better if it didn't include government spending. We've seen others in the Trump world, including Howard Lutnek, the Commerce Secretary, pick up on this idea. And of course what's behind this is that the Atlanta Federal Reserve said that it thinks there's going to be a recession, that that GDP is falling.
Well, or if not an outright recession, at least sees one really bad sorry, yes, a pretty bad economic contraction coming up.
And of course, you know, first of all, it's not surprising that people would be thinking about this, and as Elon Musk well knows, because he's you know, enacting this personal austerity measure in the in the federal government and with many federal contractors there there, there is going to be at least some economic pain, at least by design.
He's basically saying it's going to be like short term pain for long term gain. Right. Yes, people are going to be fired and lose their jobs, but like eventually, like interest rates will come down and we'll get we'll stop you know, this deficit spending.
Yeah, now, and listen, if they managed to pull that off, that would be something I mean economic you know, adjustments, fiscal adjustments. Fiscal austerity is a tried in true formula and game plan implemented by leaders throughout the world, certainly in the developing world. I mean when you mentioned that chainsaw earlier, Dana, that that Musk was wielding the other day, that was a chainsaw handed to him right now by the greatest practitioner of this model, Javier Malay, an ally
of Musks in Argentina and Melay has done this. He did radically got government spending in a country that has a bad history of overspending and there was a lot of lot of real short term pain, but there's a place where they are actually seeing the fruits of it now. Inflation is coming down rapidly. Argentines are happy with me.
Lay.
I don't know, though, Max, at this point that team Musk and team Doge have actually cut enough to truly drive the economy. My sense is what's driving the economy and sentiment. And again the fact that the not just Tesla is crashing today but the broader market is crashing is just the sense that the wh Trump package, certainly with the terrorists and everything, is just spoiling consumer sentiment.
And yeah, I think that's right. Although they are laying off a substantial number of government employees, and I don't think it would show it be showing up just yet.
I don't know. I don't know that it's enough at this point to have a to have a critical mass there. But in any of it, he's grappling with mister Gross and mister Product. Does mister Product have anything to say in return? He's got no comment?
Okay, Well, I will say, uh Axios did a pre good piece on this yesterday basically pointing out that this this has been a question It's not like economists are unaware of the issues with GDP. The you know there people talk about this all the time. In fact, the GDP statistics are frequently shown in different, you know, different ways. The problem is it's pretty hard to remove. If you remove government spending, you arguably remove you know, a bunch
of the economy. The government spends money, and then it's sort of the people who are working at those jobs and money elsewhere. Like it's it's hard to untangle.
As a former economics reporter, I have heard this debate many times, I will just say that at this point in the US, where where government spending is indeed a real driving force in this economy, and because it's just grown in recent years, it is indeed incredibly difficult to disentangle the two.
I mean.
The awkwardness is that Trump did not run on this program. Really he yeah, taught, yes, Like he brought up Elon and said Elon was going to make things more efficient, but he didn't. But he didn't quite say the thing that Elon has said, which is we're going to have you know, a couple of years of unpleasantness for a you know, great future. And and it's hard to know how you know how the politics are going to play.
You know, my suspicion is that a lot of Trump voters, not to mention democrats, are are going to be upset.
Okay, what's your next feud?
Okay, next feud? This is kind of a similar thing. This is elon against global alliances. So NATO, like UH, NATO and the United Nations. So so he a you know, roughly we've been using this measure for about eighty years. The UN was the UN founded about seventy seventy five years ago. He responded to a blue check tweet saying it's time to leave NATO and the UN, saying I agree, So so strike one for leaving the UN. Okay, no response from the UN, as know just yet.
The Secretary General didn't decide to chime in. Okay, So he's taking on GDP, NATO, the UN. He also seems to be Now this is a much more or do you have any more? Because I actually have him in there a zillion fail. Can I give you to give you the two most geopolitically high concept Can I give you one that's just sort of more of an old school brawl. Yes, But the other side hasn't taken the
pit yet, and it is Elon Musk versus Mike Myers. Now, did anybody or did everybody see the Saturday Night Live skit? They saw the Mic Myer Mike Myers doing Elon. We have a we have an audio clip, and I don't actually see it. All right, magnus hit us with the clip.
I've watched it.
I really enjoy everything you're doing with dough Gelong. They're saying I'm firing people with no cools, but I do have caols. It's cools. I feel like glitch now. I myself thought it was pretty damn funny. Elon did not. I believe Elon's ekes was. Uh. Humor fails when it lies, you.
Know, I gotta I guess I have to add my abstract feud list to Elon Musk Versus Humor. Now, just to critique the Myers performance for a minute.
Oh, so you're with Musk. It's match Chapion and Elon Musk versus Mike Myers.
I think the accent needs a little work probably, I thought were strong, and the kind of the way he sort of presented Musks kind of manic, you know, you know, pinballing from like joking, not joking, that whole thing like that felt very true. And then the kind of dynamic between Musk and Trump was was was quite funny.
No, it was, it was brilliant, and they turned it around really quickly. Although no Max disapproves of the accent. I will note Max one final point on Mike Myers. He being Canadian and all, he had a T shirt on which I had not realized initially that red Canada is not for sale. Okay, so State of the Union is just a few hours from now. For those listening immediately once the pod, it's what should be about, sorry, State of the Union? Trump will address Congress. Musk almost certainly.
I mean the first buddy's got to be there. What's he wearing, Max Chafkin.
Oh man, I mean, he's clearly gonna wear his kind of weird like Oval office get up, the you got the dark maga.
He's not gonna go dressed up as Zelenski.
The sports coat, the text support or other novelty.
T shirt, dopacle, dressed down dark trouser.
The question is how many Musk children?
Right?
That's so you're your ex is definitely there. The question is who which of Ex's siblings joins?
If X is not there, I would be shocked.
You're turning it off. No X, I'm not watching. Okay, that's what you got there.
I'm super curious to see who Musk sits with, Like is he sitting with the cabinet? Is he sitting with his mom? Is he sitting with like Republican members of Congress? Like? I want the seating chart of like the chamber.
I mean, the thing we really should be looking at, especially for people who are interested in kind of Musk's future here within the Trump administration is how Trump talks about it. How enthusiastic does Trump praise Elon? How big on Doge is he? Did you see any efforts to Hedge or anything like that? You know, though, those are going to be questions for me, although based on the body language and everything we've seen recently, I would you know.
It seems like Trump will probably tout it as one of his ears.
My out of the out of the box guess is that Hedge is so great that he keeps Elon out of the room.
What what did you say, keeps him out of the west?
Oh? Take them? You know, Elon doesn't show up out of the room.
Room.
Wow.
David Elon is addressing Republican members of Congress before the State of the.
Union like this is this is this is about as good as my Kentucky Derby is uh m, what's his name again? Your mcpatrick by the way, he's hurt, right mcpatrick, But he's he runs this Saturday. He's back off the bench this Saturday. Tampa Bay Downs. It's five o'clock. I'll be watching right, okay, Max, Danna, thank you as always.
Great to be here.
Thank you.
This episode was produced by Stacy Wong. Anna Maserakas is our editor, and Rayhan Harmanci our senior editor. Blake Maples handles engineering, and Dave Procell fact checks. Our supervising producer is Magnus Henrickson. The Elon Inc. Theme is written and performed by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugi Eira. Brendan Francis Newnham is our executive producer, and Sage Bauman is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. A big thanks as always to our supporters Joel Weber and Brad Stone. I'm David Papadopolis.
If you have a minute, rate and review our show. It'll help other listeners find us, see you next week.