Yesterday Tesla CEO Elon Musk made a rather strange comment about legacy carmaker bankruptcy. You know he may may be bullish on electric cars, but he seems to be a bit wary of the automotive sector as a whole. In recent comments on Twitter, Musk noted that other automakers are actually “much closer” to bankruptcy than the companies realize.
I think we are failing to realize the underlying principle for all of these "plans" and "stunning "announcements" have so very little to do with reality (see Nikola and Trevor Milton) and everything to do with stock price. Stocks no longer are based on anything fundamental (see Tesla) and are simply based on belief or faith, if you will. The pressure on companies to improve the stock price to benefit shareholders (the actual owners) using ANY and all means including fake it till you make it press releases.
For example: Mary Barra: "we're going to catch Tesla by 2025."
Trevor Milton: "it's a real real truck" honestly, but you can't sit in it or see it work. (just one of hundreds).
Lucid: "25,000 models" errr "12-14,000" errr "and we are happy to announce we will hit our projection of 5000"...right.
Anyway, Musk’s statement was a response to a post from former Tesla employee and YouTube creator Farzad Mesbahi, who observed that those who are focusing so much on Tesla are ignoring the fact that most other carmakers are closing in on bankruptcy. Musk’s response suggests that he agrees this is indeed the case. “Much closer than they realize,” Musk wrote.
Armen Hareyan is the founder and the Editor in Chief of Torque News. He founded TorqueNews.com in 2010, which since then has been publishing expert news and analysis about the automotive industry. He can be reached at Torque News Twitter, Facebok, Linkedin and Youtube.