Former General Motors CEO Bob Lutz, is a longtime critic of Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk. Lutz said today that he is now inspired by the leadership of an electric vehicle manufacturer.
“Tesla is finally being run like a normal business,” the former GM vice chairman said on “Squawk on the Street.” "Squawk on the Street" is a CNBC business show that takes place after the first 90 minutes of Wall Street trading in the United States.
In October, Tesla reported Q3 earnings as part of a strong month for the automaker. This served as a good impetus for some skeptics and long-standing critics of Tesla to reconsider their attitude to the company. Tesla also closed the Q4 quarter by delivering a record number of its cars, thereby fulfilling the company's forecast regarding the number of deliveries in 2019.
The Shanghai factory was built and put into operation in record time, in less than one year. The Chinese government and investors strongly support Tesla and are confident in the success of the company.
Thanks to positive events, the price of Tesla shares is growing rapidly. At the time of writing, the price per share is $496.
Lutz previously said that, in his opinion, Tesla is “headed for the graveyard.”
“The jaws are tightening and I think in another year or two we’ll see a movie called ‘Who Killed Tesla,’ a conspiracy movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio,” Lutz added.
“Tesla has no ... tech advantage, no software advantage, no battery advantage. No advantages whatsoever, ”he said.
“They will never make money on the Model 3 because the cost is way too high,” Lutz said in September 2018. “He’s got 9,000 people in that assembly plant producing less than 150,000 cars a year. The whole thing just doesn’t compute. ”
His words were highly doubtful in 2018, and in 2019, we all saw the real “value” of his opinions. The fact that Lutz made such statements only speaks of his blind hatred of Tesla. Since, to date, Tesla doesn't have a single worthy competitor in the field of tech advantage, software advantage and battery advantage.
The success of Tesla, and especially Model 3, was amazing. There is no room for doubt, because there are only facts. Lutz was in a situation where further denial of the facts would put him in an even more ridiculous situation.
"Tesla has achieved a volume break through, with the plant in China opening and selling a lot of Model 3s,” said Lutz today.
The Model 3 had a “relatively slow start,” Lutz argued. But, as we all can see, it became the bestselling electric vehicle in the world in the first 11 months of 2019.
Photo by Vorsteiner VOLTA
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Eva Fox
Eva Fox joined Tesmanian in 2019 to cover breaking news as an automotive journalist. The main topics that she covers are clean energy and electric vehicles. As a journalist, Eva is specialized in Tesla and topics related to the work and development of the company.
