Elon, Inc.Over the holiday break, Elon Musk was busy making news on X, furiously posting his way into a multipronged fight with ultra-right wing MAGA luminaries Laura Loomer and Steve Bannon about immigration visas. But over the past 24 hours, two other stories arguably overshadowed the civil war in Trumpland: a deadly Cybertruck explosion in Las Vegas and some surprisingly bad sales numbers from Tesla. David Papadopoulos is joined by Max Chafkin and Dana Hull to break down the news.
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Well, Jlon muskis now the richest person on the planet.
More than half the satellites in space are owned and controlled by one.
Man, starting his own artificial intelligence company.
Well, he's a legitimate super genius.
I mean legitimate.
He says.
He's always voted for Democrats, but this year it will be different.
He'll vote Republican.
There is a reason the US government is so reliant on him. Elon Musk is a scam artist and he's done nothing.
Anything he does he is fascinating the people.
Welcome to elan Ak, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk, Thursday, January second. I'm your host, David Papadoppolis. We are coming to you today because there has been so much news in the Musk universe that we decided it couldn't wait until Tuesday. Let's begin with the most grave news. Yesterday in Las Vegas, a cyber truck seemingly packed with explosives detonated outside of a Trump Hotel property. Then this morning, surprising Tesla sales numbers came out and they sent the stock sharply downward. But before all of this, there was a disturbance in the MAGA world, a spat over a certain kind of American work visa I brought Elon Musk to the brink of a cage match with Trump acolytes like Steve Bannon and Laura Lumer. Expletives were exchanged, ex accounts were demonetized, and Trump himself had the weigh in, which oddly hasn't really stopped the fighting. So to discuss all this, I'm joined by our regulars, Max Chafkin and Dana Hallt.
Max and Dana. Happy twenty twenty five.
Happy New Year, David, Happy New Year, Dana.
Great to be here.
Okay, So now we're recording around noon.
New York time, and this is a fluid story. New developments keep emerging. But Dana Hella, at this point, what exactly do we know about the cyber truck that exploded outside that Trump property.
So the latest is that a man packed this cyber truck with firework mortars and camp fuel canisters and was driving up and down in Las Vegas and then parked the car in front of this Trump hotel and then the car exploded and he died in the process, and other people were injured. Thankfully, no one severely injured, and the FBI is kind of widening its probe to see if there are any potential links between this incident and the horrible attack that happened in New Orleans also on New Year's Day. Elon Musk has kind of jumped in and is working very closely with the authorities. And the thing to remember about Tesla vehicles is that Tesla has a lot of data about the vehicles where they like, for where they were charged, for example, So Tesla can go back and see this guy's route from Colorado to Las Vegas and they will know where which superchargers he use. So I think my sense is that Tesla's working very closely with the Las Vegas authorities. And you know, Musk has kind of made the most of this moment, you know, arguing that the damage would have been much worse, that the cyber truck is so strong that it contained the blast and helped save lives, and you know, the cyber truck is kind of this tank from the future, and so in some ways, like you know, they are kind I mean, I don't want to go so far as to say that Musk is using this as a marketing scheme, but he is kind of making the most of the fact that only the driver of the truck died in this whole event.
I mean, Musk is doing what he always does, which is take whatever is going on in the news and comment on it. You know, He's he sort of has this instinctive ability to like pick up on what the big story is. This is, you know, unfortunately along with the attack in New Orleans. It's a big story, and he is, as Dana said, like kind of commenting on some of this stuff in what I think most people see a sort of poor taste, like sort of again promoting the cyber truck as like the best deterrent to this kind of attack because it's so strong and powerful, which maybe is getting a little ahead of the story, although it is, Hey, it's great that you know, nobody was seriously hurt in Las Vegas, so.
Max, it doesn't theme like a random thing that this truck, this cyber truck was used outside of Trump property, given the strong link between the two men at this point. But we do not actually know that at this point, at this point, that it was chosen on purpose.
Correct, No, we don't, and we don't really know anything about this attack. And I mean, that's that's you know, beyond what's been reported and basically what Dana has has outlined. Of course, you know, Elon Musk he has become a visible, you know, sign of the new administration, and this cyber truck is the probably the most you know visible of the cars, like it sort of looks the most distinctive by design, so it's it's not hard to imagine that that there was some sort of connection here. He's also been complaining about media reporting, essentially using this as like another you know case in his very extensive, you know file against the media, claiming that because some news outlets put cyber truck in the headline of this car bombing attack, that was somehow evidence of unfairness or or that you know, they're trying to imply that there was something wrong with the cyber truck, which is again I think that's part of the reason he was sort of going out of his way to like talk up the I guess like bomb smothering capabilities of this vehicle.
I suppose it's germane or seen as Germane, because the cyber truck, as you're saying, is a symbol of Tassel and Elon Musk and and that is a Trump property. And I guess just people are just trying, you know, reading a link between the two. I would suppose that's why it's remaining in the head line.
To Max's point, Tesla crashes and fires always get headlines, whereas like, you know, like there are car crashes every day and we and you don't hear about them. And so Elon's point is that this is media clickbait, just using Tesla as an egregious reason. You know that the New Orleans attack wasn't you know, Ford pickup truck used in you know, New Orleans attack. I mean, we don't care. Like so, I think that Tesla does have a beef to grind, which is that, you know, like their vehicles are always in the headline whenever there's an accident, whenever there's a fire, whenever someone dies in a car, and we don't see that with other vehicles so much.
That's interesting.
But is that a reaction to Pethla It felf the branded THELF or is that fear of the electric battery in general?
It's both. It's both. It's both.
Lithium ion batteries when they catch on fire, tend to burn for a very long time, and so like the NTSP, it has always been very interested in.
Lithium ion battery fires.
Tesla has the most electric cars on the road, so you know, just just by virtue of their market size, you're going to hear more about those accidents. And then similarly with autopilot, there have been several crashes involving autopilot that NITZA has also looked at. So it's like this never ending loop where because regulatory agencies are interested in these crashes, they make headlines. But then also because the headlines get traffic, a lot of news organizations do focus on the crashes and the name and model and make of the car when they don't in other instances with other automakers, and that's been an issue that Tesla has been really pissed off about for quite some time.
That said, the.
Fact that it was a cyber truck and Trump tower, it's like it's very newsy.
You've got some keywords there.
Yeah, yeah, well we will.
I'm sure come back to this next week as as new developments.
Warrant.
Now, Dana, you are actually on vacation today, but you're so dedicated to the story and to the news including didn't miss.
An emergency episode.
Couldn't miss an emergency episode, and we thank you for that, as do our listeners. Now, there was also this morning there were fourth quarter sales.
They came out.
It looks like the fourth quarter numbers were kind of good, but overall, indeed we have had a drop year over year.
Give us a little bit of the detail there.
Yeah, so Tesla had a record quarter.
They delivered like four hundred and ninety five thousand plus cars, but like they missed. It was the first year over year decline in like over a decade. So you know, Tesla had warned investors earlier this year that they were in between two growth waves, and we're seeing that, like, yeah, they're not growing. I mean, this is and this is a big problem for Tesla because their lineup is very old and their newest model is the cyber Truck. But the cyber Truck they don't even break out how many cars they sold. It's still like lumped in with the S and the X under other models, which is like less than five percent of their sales. So they are not growing and they don't have another car coming in their lineup. I mean, at some point we'll probably see the model why refresh, And they've hinted at like a sort of cheaper car, but everyone thinks that that's just going to be like a de contented three or y like, So.
The lineup is old.
Elon is bored of making cars, as I've said before, and like the future of the company is really about the robotaxi and autonomy and AI and kind of pivoting away from big volume and toward you know, this robotaxi idea. But you know, you're just this is just it's a big deal for Tesla. This is the first year in like a decade that they've not shown growth.
Yeah.
Now, Max, if I were to give you two statements, you know the part of the year, I think you would have told me I was crazy at the start of last year. Statement number one, Tesla's sales growth will sputter so badly, worse than the company thought, worse than analysts on Wall Street thought, so badly that it actually posted decline in sales for the first time. As Dana said in a decade one. Two, the stock will slump early in the year and then absolutely skyrocket some two at one point to smash record high.
No, I mean You're right, it's it's kind of crazy. I mean, on the other hand, what you had, what you left out of that story is the election of Donald Trump and the way that that has kind of impacted the stock price. You have a lot of people making some sort of Trump trade. We've talked about this a lot where doesn't feel based in any kind of reality. It feels like a vibes thing or whatever. And you're sort of seeing the limits of that, or the beginnings of the limits of that, we don't know. So you have two things going on. One is that, as Dana said, Tesla's you know sort of car business has been sort of stagnating and stagnating, you know, still very large, but not growing in the way that Elon Musk, you know, just going back till not too long ago, I was talking about we're going to see, you know, roughly fifty percent growth every year as far as I can see. So you have this kind of stagnating car business where he where Elon Musk, despite the cyber truck, despite efforts to kind of refresh the Model three and you know eventually other models, it hasn't it isn't appealing enough to customers keep up these growth rates. And then you have the question of what Elon musk support is doing with car buyers. Dan and I have been writing about this and talking about this for a long time. But the possibility that having this kind of trolling, you know, magnified, you know, constantly waiting into every single crisis he can find on Twitter, that that could be turning some people off, and I suspect it is. Although it's it's very hard to know how much that's affecting people, Mack, can.
I ask you it is indeed difficult to know exactly how much. But we're going to keep driving at that question over the course of the year.
But let me ask you this question.
Safe to say that right now, Tesla and the Broader muth Empire is the most politicized major company in the country right now.
Yeah, I can't imagine another's Trump Trump Inc.
Or whatever.
Maybe the only other one.
I mean, my pillow or something.
Okay, but is my pillow I'm not sure Max, is my pillow qualifies a major US company? I guess it depends on how we define major.
Because my next question then would be this, like in recent history, can we think of any example of a company of its size one of the largest companies in this country that.
Is so affiliated with a certain president and a certain party.
I mean, there's an obvious one, which is you know, News Corporation slash twenty first Century Fox. You know Rupert Murdoch his media pile.
Okay, you know.
Where where he has at times, you know, and and that that empire has been sort of divided up, and you know, the movie studio is no longer part of the company. But you know where where where Rupert mroc is very closely allied with one political party and nonetheless has managed to have a successful, kind of growing company. And and so that and I think that sort of works when you're talking about something like X, where where we've sort of seen X actually in some in some ways thrive under Musk's ownership, and of course in some way stagnate. But when you're talking about car company, Yeah, that that's where it's it's much harder to think of a parallel.
Well, I guess, I guess the the issue is that they're indeed under that model pursued by Murdoch. There were enough eyeballs and ears from the conservative from Conservative America to make that go. Are there enough as you're saying, though, Max uh drivers conservative drives to make it go uh for for mosque, And.
Yeah, I think there was a there was hope. I think when Elon among sort of like Tesla bulls, and people were trying to see a strategy behind you know, Elon Musk shift to the right rather than that than just like he is ideologically the right, he's expressing his views, you know, via his money, or that there was some kind of larger strategy here. The thought was, Okay, maybe he's trying to get sort of people in red states who have not hitherto embraced electric vehicles to embrace them. And I think that kind of made sense as a thought because again, Musk's main customer base has not been you know, among people in rural areas, people were Trump voters. But we're just not seeing I don't think we're seeing yet that that kind of shift, like like the cyber truck, as Dana has said, has not taken off in the way that I think Elon Musk hoped, and like some of that I think has to do with the difficulty in manufacturing it. They haven't been able prices maybe as you know, much as they would have liked, and as a result, you have this very expensive luxury vehicle, but also just because that's not what a lot of consumers want, and Musk has sort of pivoted the company away from his own customer base.
But Dan, I just wanted to go back to you.
I mean that point I was raising with Max about how much the sales for Tesla have sputtered and how much.
The stock is up.
Even though the stock has given up some of those gains over the last week or so and it's a down again on this.
Sales report, it still just strikes.
Me, though, that you have a very very large gap right now between expectations of what those Trump ties can deliver for the company and what the reality on the ground is for this company.
Yeah, but I think, I mean, I'll just say this, the reality on the ground is still that Tesla is the market leader when it comes to selling ev.
In the United States.
Tesla is still in a really good position. And the other thing to notice about their release today is that they have a line in there about their energy storage products. And I keep saying this over and over again, great, great quarter, Like they have installed a lot of their batteries and you know, the future is AI.
There's going to be enormous electricity demands.
Energy storage is a key way that utilities are going to be able to give us more electricity. And like Elon has said over and over again that like the growth and energy storage is going to eclipse that of the car business. And so I just would really try to encourage everyone to expand their understanding of Tesla. It is not just a car company. It is a battery company that makes cars and makes standalone energy storage products. And in twenty twenty five, you're just going to see them really focus on storage because it's just key to the whole future of AI and these enormous electricity demands that the United States has. And so you know, Elon has said that like the company is in between two growth waves. So on the one hand, like you would think that the fact that they have year year sales decline would be this atrocious thing for the stock, But look at the stock today. I mean it's down a little bit, It's not like it's not like down ten percent, Like it just doesn't move on fundamentals.
It moves on vibes.
And like the vibe is that like inauguration is in nineteen days, and like, I'm sure Elon will be there, and like I wouldn't be surprised if like Trump rolls through the inauguration in the cyber truck. You know, like we're just gonna see some crazy things going forward.
We need to talk about one more thing in our emergency pod here and Max as usual on such subjects.
I know absolutely nothing.
Because I was on vacation for a while and I was trying to tune out as best I can. But I do understand that there's been a disturbance in the Elon magaverse.
Tell me all about it.
Well, you just use those two turns kind of almost as synonymous Elon magaversus, as if they're won. But what we learned over the Christmas holiday is that they very much aren't. And if you're thinking about kind of threats to Elon Musk and Elon Musk's empire from the left, you know, because people who don't like Donald Trump are mad, and you know they're they're gonna buy a Hyundai instead of a Tesla, you need to also start thinking about threats to Musk and his empire from the right. So what happened is that Laura Lumer who's a kind of a far right activist. She's sort of been around Maga world for almost a decade. Has you know, immigration is a big issue for her. She's been banned on Twitter. She's one of the people that Elon Musk brought back. She posted a message on x criticizing one of Trump's kind of like tech adjacent appointees. This guy, Swiram Krishnan, who is a venture capitalist, was part of the kind of Elon Musk kitchen cabinet during the Twitter you know, when he took over Twitter, and she based said that, like, this is a career leftist who and is part of this tech takeover of Trump World. Now that's that's not entirely true. Chrishnan isn't isn't really a career leftist, but but she was kind of right that you've you've had a bunch of these sort of Elon adjacent figures with very few connections to to the magavers who are now in positions of influence. And this kicked off an enormous Twitter war between Musk and Laura Lumer and Steve Bannon and a bunch of other figures on the on the kind of far right, the kind of kind of og magas over this person who they see as a as a pretender. And so that's where we are today. They're still fighting and.
Is this person has is Trump uh wavered at all in the nomination of this person?
No Trump, And in fact Trump has kind of in various ways posted some signs of agreement with Musk. He he called up reporter from the New York Post and mentioned his support over the H one B visa program, which is which was which kind of became the core of the argument.
Max remind us ver a second, what exactly the H one B visa is?
All right?
So, the H one B visa is a way that tech companies and other companies bring in skilled workers on a temporary basis from outside of the US. It's a temporary visa program. It's really popular among tech companies. Facebook, Google, and Tesla make a lot of use of this. Elon Musk is a big fan. And this became kind of like the focal point of the disagreement because in the past Donald Trump had been like a big critic of H one B visas. Elon Musk is apparently a big fan, and he kind of went nuclear in defense of this thing. You know, basically just going just doing what he does, which is like post a lot of inflammatory stuff, essentially calling anyone who posed him you know, some slur you know.
Should I read it?
Should I read out the read out the tweet?
You better do it, Dan, hate us with it? Dan?
Okay, this is Elon's tweet from over the holidays. The reason I'm in America, along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of h one. B take a big step back and yourself in the face. I will go to war on this issue.
The likes of which you cannot imagine.
So yeah, I mean he put a stake in the ground and that that's like a real rift with the original MAGA people who are all like America first, we don't we want no immigration whatsoever.
So I want to understand this here, I'm to take a well it's not me, but if I were to you push you take a big state back, big step back, and then you yourself.
In the face, Yes, world's richest man.
Well but okay, so you know you Max earlier, you said Bannon jumped into the fray coming to the support of Laura Lumer.
I think we have some tape from him. Let's listen to it. Now.
This is central to how they gut it the middle class in this country. And we haven't fought these battles over years and years and years to allow American citizens of every race, ethnicity, religion be gutted by the sociopathic overlords in Silicon Valley. So no, David Sachs and Vivek Ramaswami and Elon musk nor your complete collapse and you're thinking, oh, we're.
Just trying to reform it. We're just trying to have a conversation. We're on it from it.
No, there's no reformation, no reform. We want it gone. We demand that it's gone, and we're going to fight for this and not just gone. I've got another alternative. We want reparations for the tech workers that you stole their lives.
I mean, this sounds pretty sporty. I suspect this is going to be a storyline throughout twenty twenty five.
I don't know that H one B specifically is the storyline, despite Bennet's promise, right, But I think what this is is one of many issues where they are going to be big device. I mean, the thing that's going on here is Elon Musk and Donald Trump are like not natural allies, and yet Elon Musk has extremely close access, you know, to the President elect, and like those two things are creating problems with people who also want influence and access and do not necessarily favor policies that you know, tech companies favor.
So we could be talking we're.
Talking about you know, H one B, which is a thing that tech companies like that Elon Musk likes. We could be talking about crypto rules or AI rules or Elon Musk's defense contracts. And what's so interesting about this dispute to me anyway, is that Bannon and Lumer and some of these other folks are actually keying in to this kind of like larger question.
You know.
One of the one of the tweets during this back and forth uh with Laura Lumer, she called Elon Musk a stage five clinger.
Helped me out, helped me out, Max. What's the stage five?
I think the implication is he's spending too much time at mar A Lago and so and and so, like, you know, it's like they've gotten a few zingers and they've they've pointed out a few things that are sort of you know, obviously true, like Elon Musk does not see one to eye with the kind of traditional magabase in so many ways. So like this is I don't know if H one B is the thing, but this is going to be a thing for sure.
Yeah, And they see him as like a Johnny cum Litley. I mean, the people that were with you know, Trump early on and during his first campaign, like they don't really like the fact that like Musk and like the Silicon Valley guys are now interlopers in the in their scene. And so there's this like sort of old guard new guard like battle for power, like Lumer got kicked off the campaign trail and where it whereas like Elon was like campaigning for Trump, you know, both at Butler and at Madison Square Garden and so so it's just you know, the battle for proximity and access, but also like who's the real og. I mean, I think that people that were with Trump from early on are really resentful of these guys and their and their power.
Now.
I think these are This is related to the other two stories we just talked about, Like Elon Musk has made a choice when he endorsed Donald Trump, and when he went all in on the on doing so, and you know, giving you know, hundreds of billions of dollars, becoming his biggest donor, putting the Maga hat on, and like we are seeing kind of with all three of these stories, some of the consequences of that choice, like the cyber truck now is has become a symbol of Trump, who is a controvers controversial symbol. We're seeing potentially left wing buyers not want to buy Tesla's and now on the right we're seeing buyers like it. In a way, Elon Musk is, he's never been more powerful. He's at the arm of the future president of the United States. Tesla Stock, as you said, is way way the heck up. On the other hand, he really feels like he's in an ever smaller political box where you have the left on one side and the kind of far right on the other.
Yeah. So, I mean it is a great point that you know, this gamble he's made on Trump has worked out in me anyways spectacularly well so far. But it absolutely is simultaneously an incredible blessing for him and also a curse that brings its risks and its potential downsides. Mac, Can I give you a small assignment before we get back on next week?
Can I?
Can I ask you to try to walk, you know, work through and understand the mechanics of that that taking a big step back and.
Then putting yourself in the face and then report back to.
Okay, I'll come equips with white boys.
Mac.
The mail keeps coming in, uh to elon incot Bloomberg dot end.
That's right, I've been really enjoying. Are we going to read those now? We're gonna wait till We're not going to.
Read them now.
This is just a teas to say that they keep coming in, keep sending them in thoughts, ideas, things you love, things you hate, bumper sticker ideas, feud ideas and so on and so forth. And we will dig into the mailbox, uh next week, or I should say we will dig into the mail bag. We're calling it a mail bag or a mail box.
What's the email address?
Again? The mail bag?
What is it you want to ink at? Bloomberg dot net.
Danna, thank you so much for joining us. Now go enjoy the rest of your day off.
I will thank you.
This episode was produced by Stacey Wong. Anna Masarrakas is our editor and Rayhan Harmanski our senior editor. The idea for this very show also came from Rayhan. Blake Maples handles engineering, and David Purcell fact checks. Our supervising producer is Magnus Hendrickson.
The Elon Inc.
Theme is written and performed by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugiera. Brendan Francis Nunham is our executive producer, and Stage Bauman is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. A big thanks as always to our supporters Joel Weber and Bradstone. 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.
