Written by Cláudio Afonso | info@claudio-afonso.com | LinkedIn | Twitter
Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk was interviewed on Tuesday morning by Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait at the Qatar Economic Forum covering Musk’s deal with Twitter, Tesla, 2024 Elections and a possible recession in the U.S..
When asked about Tesla’s competition — including established auto giants such as Volkswagen and Ford but also the rising stars in China such as NIO and XPeng — Musk enhanced the hard work of the Chinese car manufacturers.
“In general, I am very impressed with Chinese car manufacturers. I think they are very competitive, work hard, and are also very smart,” Musk said.
At the same time, Tesla’s CEO said disclosed that supply constraints are the biggest brake on the company’s growth, rather than competition: “Our constraints are much more in raw materials and being able to scale up production”.
This was not the first time Musk mentioned the hard work mentality in China. When questioned about the relevance of the Chinese Market in mid-May at the FT Future of the Car event, he said:
“ (…) I think there will be some very strong [EV] companies coming out of China. There are just a lot of super talented hard-working people in China that are strongly believing in manufacturing. They won’t just be burning the midnight oil, they’ll be burning the 3AM oil. They won’t even leave the factory type-of-thing, whereas, in America, people are trying to avoid going to work at all.”
Last week, Tesla raised the prices on its website for all its models in the United States. Although the company has not commented on the price increase, the recent inflation numbers and the ongoing global supply-chain issues are seen as the main reasons for the decision.
Recently, Tesla Silicon Valley Owners Club released the second segment of a three-part interview where Elon Musk said “unless something changes significantly with Rivian and Lucid, they will both go bankrupt“.
“Unless something changes significantly with Rivian and Lucid, they will both go bankrupt. They are tracking toward bankruptcy. I hope they can do something, but unless they can cut their cost dramatically, they are in deep trouble and will end up in the cemetery like every other car company with the exception of Tesla and Ford”, Musk said.
Written by Cláudio Afonso | info@claudio-afonso.com | LinkedIn | Twitter