Current Twitter CEO Elon Musk recently joined a Twitter spaces event to discuss another company that he's in charge of auto manufacturer Tesla Inc. TSLA .
The former richest man in the world spent nearly an hour talking to the interviewer.
With so much speculation as to Musks motives in light of plunging Tesla stock prices and chaos on the Twitter platform, this was a rare opportunity to hear his thoughts regarding both companies first-hand in a relaxed atmosphere. Here are seven key takeaways from the interview with Twitter users @StockMKTNewz, @WholeMarsBlog, and @StockTalkWeekly.
See Also: Tesla Impersonated By Parody Handle On Twitter1. Elon is confident his political Tweets arent having an impact on Tesla stock
When asked by an interviewer if his political views and focus on Twitter was negatively impacting Tesla, Elon flatly denied it. Instead, he blames Teslas poor performance on interest rates.
Musk: I don't think it's a significant factor. I think most people are just not realizing it's how I keep on like a broken record on this. But how big of an impact does a Fed rate level on the order of 5% have? We are in a deflationary environment.2. Elon is serious about stepping down from Twitter but not for the reasons you think.
Those following the hashtags that predict Twitters downfall will be happy to know that Elon not only doesnt consider the job hes done to be poor. He believes that running Twitter is very easy, hes almost done, and soon he can step away to focus on SpaceX and Tesla, which are much more complicated.
Musk: I spent a month or so just getting the insane Twitter costs under control. So now, that is basically done, and then I've got to make sure that the engineering at Twitter is working. Otherwise, Twitter cannot develop new features. But in the grand scheme of things, the amount of actual cognitive load that Twitter represents is low. I mean, it is a much simpler problem than Tesla and SpaceX, obviously, by a country mile. I didn't fail to do anything at Tesla that could have been done. I literally cannot think of a single thing.3. Elon blames the poor performance of Tesla stock on inflation and rising interest rates.
Elon blames plummeting stock prices for Tesla on lower sales because of high-interest rates.
Musk: Since the vast majority of cars are bought on credit, the high-interest rate is literally increasing the price of the car. So in order to keep demand constant, you would have to decrease the price of the car. It's kind of blown my mind that the Fed has raised rates so high. The economy right now is like a car, you know, driving around on a cliff-side road, and the Fed is driving it by looking at the rearview mirror.4. Tesla has an amazing future roadmap, which Elon is not yet ready to share.
Beyond extolling the virtues of Teslas self-driven cars, Musk was not specific on what announcements Tesla might have in the future. He was clear that he is not making them now and that they will be awesome.
Musk: This is not the forum to make product announcements. But we obviously want to make more affordable cars. The Tesla product pipeline is awesome. I think Tesla's got the most exciting product roadmap of any company on Earth by far.
I think Tesla's positioned better than any other car company by far. We are starting from a position where our gross margins are higher than anyone else, which gives us more room to lower them and maintain or increase demand. So now, does that mean that the profits are pretty picture in like a 2009-style recession? Of course not. This that's not physically possible.5. Twitter spaces are important to Elon.
Musk recently rage-quit a Twitter spaces event he was participating in when reporters asked him questions he didnt care for. And then, by happenstance, the feature was pulled from the platform for about 24 hours to fix a legacy problem. So, understandably he was asked if Twitter Spaces were considered an important feature.
Musk: Twitter Spaces is a great forum for the public in general. And I think it's quite useful to get the message out. Being on Twitter spaces and then being able to see Twitter comments at the same time, I think is Twitter at its best.6. Elon isnt planning on selling any more Tesla stock in the near future.
Musk: I'm not selling any stock for a minimum of 18 to 24 months, which will probably be in 2025 or something. Definitely not next year under any circumstances and probably not the year thereafter.7. Twitter is cat-meme crack but Elon cant think of anything he could have done better with Twitter or Tesla.
Musk: Twitter is mega catnip crossed with cat meme crack. So any little thing on Twitter and it is front-page news. Is there anything that I could have done in the past few months that would have helped with test execution? I literally can't think of anything."
Cover image by Marcin Pa?nicki from Pixabay