According to a new, brow-raising WSJ report, Tesla\u2019s board quietly began searching for Elon Musk\u2019s potential successor about a month ago, approaching executive search firms as the carmaker faced protests, plummeting sales, and shrinking profits while Musk waded into Washington to slash government spending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Board members reportedly met with Musk to express concerns about his divided attention, telling him he needed to spend more time on Tesla and to publicly commit to doing so; per the Journal report, Musk didn\u2019t push back and subsequently told investors he would \u201callocate far more time to Tesla\u201d starting in May.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Musk\u2019s government work led to Tesla\u2019s first annual sales decline in over a decade; it also tarnished the company\u2019s brand image among some consumers due to his political alignment. The impact has been fast and furious: Tesla\u2019s market value dropped from $1.5 trillion in December to about $900 billion currently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite these challenges, Musk sounded optimistic about Tesla\u2019s future during last week\u2019s earnings call, where the company reported a 71% profit decline and 9% revenue drop.\u201dWe\u2019re not on the ragged edge of death,\u201d Musk assured investors, \u201cnot even close.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The current status of the succession planning remains unclear, according to the Journal, which adds that it\u2019s unclear whether Musk was aware of the effort.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
According to a new, brow-raising WSJ report, Tesla\u2019s board quietly began searching for Elon Musk\u2019s potential successor about a month ago, approaching executive search firms as the carmaker faced protests, plummeting sales, and shrinking profits while Musk waded into Washington to slash government spending. Board members reportedly met with Musk to express concerns about his<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4857,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4856","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/echocurrentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/echocurrentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/echocurrentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/echocurrentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/echocurrentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4856"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/echocurrentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4858,"href":"https:\/\/echocurrentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4856\/revisions\/4858"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/echocurrentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/echocurrentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/echocurrentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/echocurrentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}