Elon Musk on Tuesday dismissed speculation that he could step down as Tesla’s CEO, telling the company’s annual shareholders meeting that the electric car and solar panel company would start advertising.
“Say, that’s not the case,” asked one shareholder musk about stepping down as Tesla boss. “It’s not like that,” he replied without further discussion.
When another shareholder suggested Tesla try advertising, Musk said he was open to it.
“There are some benefits to this,” he told the shareholder at the meeting at the Tesla factory near Austin, Texas. “We’ll try some advertising and see how it goes.”
Tesla has notoriously avoided paying for ads like its competitors, and largely relies on Musk’s ability to generate free ads — he has 140 million followers Twitter, The social media company bought for $44 billion last fall.
Musk told shareholders that the company’s “full self-driving” software is close to being safer than human driving. He had previously said the system should be ready this year, a promise he’s been making for several years.
Tesla says on its website that the cars cannot drive themselves and humans must be ready to intervene at any time. The company too was forced by US security agencies to recall the software because in some cases it violated traffic rules. The issues identified by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are set to be addressed through an online software update.
During Tuesday’s meeting, Musk warned that the next 12 months could be challenging for the Austin-based company, especially as rising interest rates have pushed up the cost of buying a car.
“Tesla is not immune to the global economic environment,” he said, predicting the company will weather this period and do well even if many companies go bankrupt.
Later on CNBC He spoke about the affordability of Tesla cars. “When the rates on your car or your home go up, you have less money for other things,” he said.
He told the congregation that the pain at work is sometimes “quite unbearable”. He called his time as Twitter CEO a “short-term distraction” and said the company needed open-heart surgery to ensure its survival.
It’s in a stable place now and he’s happy to have Linda Yaccarino, who he poached from NBCUniversal, to operate Twitter. Musk said the time he will devote to Twitter will be “relatively minimal” compared to the past six months since purchasing the social media platform.
Prior to Musk’s speech, shareholders voted to appoint Tesla co-founder and former chief technology officer JB Straubel to the company’s board of directors for the next three years. Straubel left Tesla in 2019 to start a battery materials recycling company.
Shareholders also re-elected Musk and Chairwoman Robyn Denholm to the board.
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