Musk Blames NY Times For $100 Million Loss, Should Blame Himself

Tesla CEO Elon Musk found the perfect scapegoat for lost Tesla sales and a 13 percent drop of the company’s stock: John Broder of the New York Times. Musk told Reuters that “Tesla has lost about $100 million in sales and canceled orders due to the Times story, which said the sedan ran out of battery power sooner than promised during a chilly winter test drive from Washington D.C. to Boston.”  Musk should look in the mirror if he needs a scape goat.

To pile on more, Musk told the wire that “between $100 million and $200 million of Tesla’s drop in market value was due to the Times article.” Since the Times’ February 8 story, Tesla shares have fallen 13 percent.

“We have seen a few hundred cancellations that are due to the NYT piece and slightly lowered demand in the U.S. Northeast region,” Musk emailed Reuters.

Reuters carefully raises the possibility that either Musk’s math is wrong, or the losses in sales are steeper. Says the wire: “To lose $100 million in car sales, assuming a $100,000 price per vehicle, Tesla would have to sell 1,000 fewer cars than expected.”

Musk says that a “Tesla team and I are brainstorming this week how to correct the misperception that they have created in the market about how well our car performs in cold weather. That too, will take money and time.”

TTAC says and said: Musk has nobody else to blame than himself. It was Musk who started the Great Twitter War that still reverberates through the interwebs. The Times story had received zero traction in the media until Musk twittered the lid off it, and it exploded. Musk is a loose cannon, and the easiest way the Tesla team can start changing the perceptions in the market is to take away Musk’s Twitter account.  However, it may be too late. The spat between a West Coast tycoon and the New York paper told a much wider public that “maybe, this EV stuff is still not ready for prime time,” as more than one commenter commented.

Ditzy Docherty Makes Waves In Deutschland, Blames Ill-Informed Customers For Lack Of Chevy Sales

Yesterday, we wrote about Susan Docherty’s grand strategy for Cadillac: Make Cadillac great in Europe to convince the Chinese to buy Cadillac. Clever strategy. But what if it fails in Europe? Truts me, its European failure is assured. In the meantime, the story has landed in Europe. Germany’s premiere car dealer magazine Der Kfz-Betrieb runs with the story today (with a nice shout-out to TTAC, Danke.)

The experts at Der KFz-Betrieb give the grand Cadillac strategy only passing mention and recommend to check with TTAC if someone wants an assessment. What the magazine is most interested in are Docherty’s comments about the “lackluster performance of Chevrolet in Europe.” That grabs Deutschland’s dealers more than non-existent Caddy sales.

Docherty blames the ill-informed European customer. Docherty said that European customers know Chevrolet only for its Corvette and Camaro. “What they don’t know is the Spark and Aveo and Cruze and Orlando, and the newest one we’re about to launch, the Trax,” Docherty told WardsAuto. “Not only are we trying to raise the opinion of Chevrolet and Cadillac, we’ve got to increase the overall awareness.” Again, another laser-sharp Dochertanian observation.

Right on, says Kfz Betrieb: “German Opel and Chevrolet dealers have demanded more advertising for years. Chevrolet Germany however only wants to spend more for advertising when the dealers have moved more cars.” While chicken waits for egg and egg waits for chicken, Chevrolet’s sales dropped 40 percent in January in Europe.

There is money to sponsor Manchester United. Says Kfz-Betrieb: “This deal did cost GM half a billion Euro, but it will hardly significantly raise the awareness of the brand and its specific products throughout Europe.”