It’s possible that Elon Musk’s contentious electric truck has dug its own box-shaped grave.
Elon Musk’s week has been awful, horrible miserable.
Initially, a judge invalidated a stock grant that Musk had obtained from Tesla stockholders, partly through threats of quitting the firm. The gift, which was initially valued at about $50 billion, would suddenly be worth $100 billion because of a post-election rally for the business whose owner fully supported the incoming president.
$100 billion is huge money, even for the richest man in the world, who is currently worth $333 billion. Musk’s lead over Jeff Bezos, the second-richest man in the world, on the crucial billionaires list would have doubled as a result of the grant.
However, a little worse news for Musk’s long-term prospects just surfaced from Tesla’s Austin factory: it looks like the company is cutting back on the manufacturing of cybertrucks. Employees on the car assembly line have been informed that they would not be required to report for duty for three days.
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This follows a number of similar slowdowns in October, according to Business Insider, which has four sources on the production floor. Not to add a dramatic drop in overtime offers and an increase in cleaning and training tasks to fill their hours.
Although the cause of the slowdown has not yet been disclosed by Tesla, this is hardly what you would anticipate from a struggling automaker. Sales for automakers typically peak in the spring, when prospective buyers receive tax breaks and road conditions improve. Therefore, the Cybertruck factory should be operating at full capacity right now if Tesla executives were expecting blockbuster sales in a few months.
You want to buy a Cybertruck?
Rather, Cybertruck inventory appears to be backed up, which is never good when your company’s mission is to move it. It’s particularly bad if you have two million pre-orders, as it implies that almost all of them—aside from perhaps 50,000—were not sincere. (Which seems like a plausible result considering that prospective clients just needed to pay a $100 deposit.)
