Elon Musk named Tesla competitor
TECH mogul Elon Musk faces some fierce competition from Tesla’s industry rival after laughing them off more than 10 years ago.
A clip of Musk chuckling at a mention of the auto maker has resurfaced after business surged for the Chinese EV company.
Chinese automaker BYD delivered 431,603 fully-electric vehicles in the third quarter, a few thousand less than Musk’s Tesla, which reported 435,000 deliveries, according to The Street.
Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, previously shared his thoughts on BYD in 2011.
The Bloomberg interview was recently re-shared on X, formerly known as Twitter.
A woman interviewing Musk is seen talking about how BYD, which has US operations based out of the West Coast, was “ramping up production of their electric vehicles.”
Musk begins to laugh immediately while the interviewer goes on to mention how Warren Buffett owned a 10 percent stake in the company.
“Why do you laugh? Here he is … trying to compete,” the interviewer asked. “Why do you laugh?”
Musk, with a huge smile on his face, replied: “Have you seen their car?”
He keeps laughing throughout the next few seconds of the clip.
The interviewer then asked: “You don’t see them all as a competitor?” and Musk said: “No.”
Alongside the X post, a reader added the following context: “This video was taken in 2011 and does not reflect Elon Musk’s current view on BYD.”
Musk also replied to the clip, commenting: “That was many years ago. Their cars are highly competitive these days.”
Following a recent report of the Top Selling Electric Vehicles in The World between January and August 2023, Musk wrote on X: “Chinese automakers are the most competitive in our experience.”
Tesla Model Y was listed as number one on the top 20 list with Tesla Model 3 coming in at third, while BYD’s vehicles were also included.
Five of the top 10 best-selling electric vehicles sold between January and August of this year were BYD vehicles, according to the report.
Meanwhile, Tesla is cutting the price of popular EV models in a bid to increase demand after Musk’s electric car brand missed its most recent market targets last week.
Now it is slashing the prices of its Model 3 sedan and Model Y SUV to boost sales.
Tesla is fighting to stop US auto giants like Ford muscling in on the EV market.
But its shares have fallen by 2.1 percent – with some investors worried that the price cuts will hurt profits.
The EV maker is pushing to build a record 476,000 motors in the last three months of this year, in a bid to meet its annual target of 1.8million new cars.
Musk is banking that the strikes faced by its “Detroit Three” rivals will help non-unionized Tesla win the EV price wars.