Elon Musk Looked Emotional During Vote To Remove Him From Tesla
The first two quarters of 2018 has seen Tesla lose almost $1.5 billion in cash. Tesla started the year with $3.4 billion in cash, and lost more than $700 million at the end of Q1, ending on $2.7 billion in cash. The second quarter of this year has seen Tesla lose $784.6 million, and this time last year, Tesla was losing an estimated $13,000 for each of the 25,051 cars the company produced.
The only profitable quarter in the past three years was Q3 in 2016, where Tesla made $220 million in profit. Unfortunately, this has caused some of Telsa’s shareholders to be concerned – namely Jing Zhao. Zhao has questioned whether Musk, who is invested in plenty of other companies, is spread too thin and should be removed as the chairman of Tesla.
Along with being the chairman of Tesla, Musk is also spread across PayPal, SpaceX, The Boring Company, Solar City, DeepMind, and many other companies. This has caused quite a stir for the board at Tesla, with Zhao’s proposal stating that having Musk as the chairman of Tesla’s board may not be effective as the company is now encroaching into far more competitive markets.
Thankfully, the board voted against Zhao’s proposal, however moments after the vote was made Musk appeared emotional. His voice was quivering as he said that Tesla had experienced “the most excruciating hellish several months that we’ve ever had.” Things are starting to look up for Tesla, though, as production on the Model 3 is increasing. Currently Tesla is producing 3,500 Model 3’s per week, and will hopefully reach their goal of producing 5,000 per week by the end of June. This comes as good news to the 100,000+ people who pre-ordered a Model 3.
Musk also came under fire last month as he refused to answer questions from analysts, saying “Boring bonehead questions are not cool. Next. We’re going to go to YouTube. Sorry, these questions are so dry. They’re killing me.”
