Elon Musk’s Tesla is advertising on X, the former Twitter. LEON NEAL/Getty Images
Elon Musk has given a vague answer to a question about whether he wants to reduce his role at Tesla in the coming years.
Musk made the comments during a conference call on Tesla’s first quarter results on Tuesday.
He wants to maintain a certain level of control so that Tesla can continue to grow.
This is a machine translation of an article from our US colleagues at Business Insider. It was automatically translated and checked by a real editor.
Elon Musk did not give a clear answer on Tuesday when asked whether he plans to retire from Tesla in the coming years.
The Tesla CEO spoke in a conference call about the quarterly reports. The electric car manufacturer recently had to struggle with a decline in sales. The business results showed that Tesla fell short of expectations in profit and sales in the first quarter of 2024, but performed better than expected in gross profit.
During the conference call, Toni Sacconaghi, a Wall Street analyst at Bernstein, asked about Musk’s future involvement with Tesla, noting that the billionaire currently runs several companies. In addition to being CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Musk is also the owner and CTO of X, formerly known as Twitter, and the owner and founder of The Boring Company.
“You’re running a lot of important companies right now,” Sacconaghi said. “Maybe you can just talk about where your heart lies in terms of your interests, and do you expect to reduce your involvement with Tesla at some point in the next three years?”
Read too
Elon Musk has to explain Tesla’s first decline in sales in years – that’s why the stock still doesn’t crash
Musk gives a vague answer
“Tesla takes up most of my time and I work pretty much every day of the week. It’s rare that I take a Sunday afternoon off. So I make sure Tesla is very successful,” Musk replied. “It is successful and will continue to be so in the future.”
The vague answer notably did not address whether or not Musk plans to scale back his involvement with Tesla in the future. During discussions about his Tesla pay package in January, Musk indicated that he did not want to continue to grow Tesla without retaining some level of control over the company.
“I feel uncomfortable making Tesla a leader in AI and robotics without owning approximately 25 percent of the voting rights. Enough to be influential, but not so much that I can’t be outvoted,” wrote Musk on X. “Unless that is the case, I would prefer to build products outside of Tesla.”
Less than two weeks later, a judge in Delaware overturned Musk’s $55 billion (€51.5 billion) Tesla pay package, which also included Tesla stock options. Tesla is now asking shareholders to approve the compensation plan, saying Musk deserves it and that it is “critical to Tesla’s future success.”
Musk and Tesla did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Read the original article in English here.