There was a time when I could just email Elon Musk. It didn’t seem weird to me then, as he wasn’t yet the richest man in the world or the owner of one of the most influential social media platforms. He was just a Silicon Valley guy trying to build an electric car company in America.
I didn’t take advantage of this at the time as my powers of prognostication are quite limited. I distinctly remember Musk sitting around, looking kinda bored, on the floor of some auto show at the end of a press day in… probably 2008. In retrospect, I should have tried to have a long conversation with him. Instead, I just briefly said hi and moved on to track down, like, a Mitsubishi exec or do something else totally pointless.
I think I communicated with his then-assistant, Mary Beth Brown, more than I ever did with her boss. Musk soon brought on a series of traditional professional PR people and he stopped returning my emails. I didn’t remember any of his PR people lasting very long and, eventually, Musk just got rid of his comms department altogether. It seems to have worked out for him, but now it appears that Tesla is going to try and fix this.
While I was not able to predict the sudden rise of Elon Musk, I did predict the fall of Carlos Tavares, albeit not the speed with which it happened. Thanks to some good reporting, I can do at least one more Morning Dump story about Tavares explaining why it was so abrupt.
Ford had another great month of hybrid sales, which isn’t a surprise, though it also moved a lot of electric cars. Is this fear over Trump killing the EV tax credit? Will GM kill its hybrid plans because of Trump’s threats to relax emissions regulations? There’s a lot to consider this morning, so let’s just jump into this together.
Tesla Listed A ‘Vehicle Communications Manager’ Job On LinkedIn
If I have a big question, or sometimes even a small one, I’ll reach out to a PR person from an automaker. This happens all the time. Sometimes it’s a formal email. If it’s an automaker I have a better relationship with it might be a call or a text. This week Thomas reached out to two different people to confirm details on Toyota’s new paint color.
With Tesla there’s no one to talk to so I don’t even try anymore. Whereas before I could email Rachel or Khobi or Keely, now I don’t even have an email address. This all happened in 2020 when Tesla admitted it dissolved its PR team with no intention of replacing them.
[Ed Note: I recall, after I wrote the article “Tesla Model 3 Teardown By Engineering Firm Reveals Quality Flaws Like ‘A Kia In The ’90s‘,” Keely called me up and tried yelling at me, asking why I didn’t call her before writing that article, and lamenting how she’s now a week late to respond to the bad press (the answer is that Munro is a trusted engineering firm, and their analysis stands on its own; also, a PR person should have their head on a swivel — to be a week late isn’t my fault). I eventually had to end the conversation with: “This conversation is over.” That’s not usually my style, but I’m not going to be yelled at by anyone (unless I deserve it). But this was the Tesla approach towards the end, though I think it was largely driven by stress, so I feel for Keely. -DT].
Since then the company has become even more valuable and sold millions of cars. Musk has a bit of P.T. Barnum in him and, via Twitter (which he bought and turned into X), he was able to communicate directly with journalists or whomever he wanted to whenever that was something he wanted to do. Plus, it wasn’t like press relations completely dried up.
If you were a Wall Street Journal or a friendly magazine like MotorTrend there was always someone to communicate with if you wanted a car or a quote. Mostly, Musk just got rid of the kind of interim PR people who dealt with annoying automotive journalists and smaller newspapers. By harnessing an army of Tesla stans Musk did an end-run around the traditional media apparatus and it’s had no obvious impact on the company, at least not a detrimental one.
Is this changing? Someone pointed me to this listing for a “Vehicle Communications Manager” and the job description is interesting.
As the Vehicle Communications Manager, you will be responsible for managing all external data communication relating to vehicle programs and coordinating efforts with external media. This includes closely collaborating with technical staff on vehicle metrics, managing external vehicle data to achieve consistency and accuracy, approving website content and enabling external media access to assess product. Your work will include advising on new product target setting and assessing program developments as an early customer-ambassador. You will work closely with a wide spectrum of technical and business teams in addition to Vehicle Program Managers, Vehicle Technical Leaders and company executives to align on public facing data and help the world appreciate the impact of Tesla products.
Huh, that sure sounds like exactly the kind of role the company abandoned a few years ago.
Strategically, I think this makes sense. Tesla is a mass market company, and it’s not difficult to get your hands on Tesla products. While we weren’t the first to get a Cybertruck, it didn’t take us long to find one to review. When the company’s products were a bit more limited then Tesla could play the access game, but now, actually, Tesla is in a compromised position because it can’t control the cars that journalists get.
Even if an automaker isn’t a fan of a particular journalist, it’s better for the PR department to provide a carefully curated experience and vehicle than it is to let a journalist get a random car off Turo. With Tesla’s sales starting to come back down to earth, it probably behooves them to reestablish some kind of normal relationship with journalists to get them cars.
Plus, Tesla’s vehicles are generally fantastic, and getting more people driving them is unlikely to reflect poorly on Tesla.
Is this some sort of trick? Is Musk playing 9-dimensional chess in order to get us to write about this? Maybe. I do not play 9-dimensional chess. I used to play a game called Race For The Galaxy that I’m guessing Musk would enjoy, but since having a kid I’ve been playing a game called Butts On Things. It’s a fun game, you shouldn’t judge.
If this is real do I think we’ll suddenly be getting a bunch of press cars? I’m not sure, but it would be nice to reestablish normal relationships with arguably the most important car company in the world.
The Stellantis Board Agrees With Us
Hey! On the topic of press access, it’s quite possible that all of my stupid Jon Lovitz jokes about Carlos Tavares, not pictured above, may have cost us access to certain Stellantis events. I am not at all mad about this. If I were a PR person at an automaker I wouldn’t want to have to try to explain that joke, or explain why I was inviting a journalist whose publication repeatedly said that the CEO was picking too many fights with people and had no good plan for a post-pandemic environment.
Obviously, Tavares is out, having “resigned” abruptly last Sunday. Little explanation for what happened was given, but we now have some info via Reuters, which reports that the board was mad that he didn’t seem to have a good plan for a post-pandemic environment and was picking too many fights with people. ORLY?
Let’s snag some quotes here that make this website look very prescient:
When board members started asking more specific questions about the executive’s strategies, the person said, “Tavares’ reaction was: ‘You do not interfere with my job – that is not your business.'”
That’s a good start.
Board members, irritated, continued pressing Tavares, the source said. They were unsettled by what they viewed as the CEO’s relentless but narrow focus on cost-cutting, which had caused supply disruptions and angered dealers. Those problems had been overlooked in previous years, when Stellantis was hitting double-digit profit margins.
Cool. Cool. Cool.
Now those and other issues were causing angst across the sprawling company, as Tavares tangled with dealers, unions, suppliers and governments – and now board members.“You cannot make enemies with everybody,” the person said.
There’s so much in here. Ok, one more, then you’ll have to read the article for the rest:
Tavares, the source said, sometimes viewed suppliers as expendable in his cost-cutting drive, while board members worried that replacing trusted parts makers was not quick and caused disruptions.“You cannot just say ‘you’re out'” to longtime suppliers, the source said. “That puts at risk your very capacity to produce cars.”
Tavares, a protégé of Carlos Ghosn, thought the deal would result in “roughly $20 [billion] to $25 billion in value creation.” And for a while — thanks largely to a global pandemic that interrupted supplies, flooded markets with stimulus funds and supercharged automaker profits — Tavares looked as though he could do no wrong.
But when conditions normalized and the smoke from the pandemic cleared, what Tavares had actually created was an unwieldy global portfolio of weak, investment-starved brands, a portfolio of products that are too expensive for their customers and a group of investors and creditors with no patience for anything but record profitability. He had promised billions in synergies to feed investor returns, but instead created a company held hostage by parochial and nationalistic concerns, with torched supplier relations and even less remaining goodwill from its dealers.
Ford Sold A Lot of EVs And Hybrids
Ford continues to lose money on electric vehicles as it plans to skip ahead to something affordable to compete with Chinese automakers. Still, the company’s November EV sales were up 20.8% y-o-y in November according to its latest sales report. Over that same time period, hybrid sales were up 18.% and internal combustion vehicles were up 13.4%.
Price cuts are surely helping this growth, which were driven by Mach-E and E-Transit sales, with F-150 Lightning sales down a bit in November (though still up on the year). I tend to think some of this probably has to do with the threat of killing the tax credit on EVs, though most automakers were probably up in November. It’ll be fun to watch EV sales over the next few months.
Now that the new Ranger is for sale, Maverick sales have started to come back to Earth, with November sales down 33.5% and Ranger sales up 2,346%. Ford did announce that hybrid Maverick sales were still up year-over-year, which I take as a good sign.
GM CFO Says GM Could Cut Hybrids And EVs In The Future
And while we’re talking about the potential changes to the government’s strategy on electrification, the possibility that the administration might relax emissions could lead to carmakers like GM reconsidering their mix of powertrains.
General Motors is prepared to shift its all-electric strategy, including its plan to bring plug-in hybrid technology to certain models in North America in 2027, if the Trump administration eases environmental regulations on new vehicles.
GM CFO Paul Jacobson said Wednesday that the automaker still maintains its long-term goal to offer an all-electric lineup in the next decade, but depending on regulatory changes by a new White House, the automaker may tweak its portfolio of products in the near term.
“In a world where compliance is eased, you could see where you don’t necessarily need as much plug-in, you might not need as much (battery electric vehicles) as well,” Jacobson said. “But we’ll cross that bridge.”
Jacobson went on to add that the company is likely to be the second biggest EV automaker in the United States this year, besting Ford, and that the company expects to make $2-$4 billion in profits next year from its electric vehicle program. How much of that number depends on tax credits is an open question.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
Would you like to see the year-end-review playlists from some of your favorite Autopian contributors today? That’s something I might do. In order to not give you any hints, let me pick something that wasn’t on my replay list. My wife listened to this song a lot, but I did not. Still, “Birds of a Feather” from Billie Eilish is pretty good.
The Big Question
Are you planning to drive or fly anywhere for Christmas?
IIIIIIIINTERESTING. That Tesla comms job is in CA, not in TX where they’ve made a gigantic stink about moving. (And they’re advertising LGBTQ+ care concierge services on top of that, despite all of Elon’s gross breeding-kink terfery.) It’s as if the adults in the company understand that its head’s culture-war garbage is 100% toxic, and that convincing a lot of smart folks to move to a state that keeps torpedoing personal rights and pulling other quality-of-life shenanigans like dramatically underfunding public schools is an uphill battle.
Then again, I don’t think they ever moved a lot of the corporate/comms-ish roles over here. I remember people suggesting that I look at Tesla when I was hunting for a job, to which I’d kindly explain the kind of unrealistic hell their comms people no doubt faced (given their interactions with the press side), and also ask, “doing what?” Sometimes I’d see basic copywriting kinds of roles pop up, but that’s it. Anything higher up typically didn’t move to Austin.
Pay for that role in that location in particular seems hella low to me, but then again, there is no amount of compensation that would make me want to work there without a dramatic change in leadership and corporate culture.
(Flush: Yes, I’m driving. It’s a four-to-five hour trip to Mom’s, with a stop mid-way at the dealership in Waco to see if I can get the remote receiver for the Lancer fixed.)
Solo 715 mile one-day travel to kids and grandkid sometime before and leaving sometime after Christmas. Weather determines when to travel through the Siskiyous to get from the Sacramento area to the Tacoma area. I have done the trip in 10 hours once, will not do it that fast again, just too anxiety producing. More like 12-13 hours with two gas stops.
> an unwieldy global portfolio of weak, investment-starved brands,
That was obvious from the get-go. Name one Stellantis brand that isn’t perennially third-rate at best. It’s a junk drawer of shit brands that only sell because of cult brand loyalty and/or massive incentives on the hood. Stellantis needs to be broken up because as a conglomerate it doesn’t really make any sense.
I how many people at Tesla (and Space X) are thinking “the boss will probably be pretty busy for the next few years, so we can probably quietly undo some of his more stupid descisions without him noticing…”
Gosh, one can only hope. Bonus points if they can shove him out entirely.
Vehicle Communications Manager Carlos Tavares. Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?
The wife and I recently discovered the joy of traveling in-between major holidays, so flying home to see some folks next week. The airports aren’t very crowded and flights, rental cars, hotels are all cheap! I just say Merry Thanksmas to the family and get home after/before the holiday travel madness!
I think you are misreading the job ad. It’s for a manager overseeing the communication(s) among vehicles, such as ensuring civility and useful conversations. Like an editor, you know? We know they are talking to each other wirelessly so I am sure my take is 100% correct.
>General Motors is prepared to shift its all-electric strategy, including its plan to bring plug-in hybrid technology to certain models in North America in 2027, if the Trump administration eases environmental regulations on new vehicles.
Fucking called it. These companies do not want to make electrics and all the sales numbers in the world won’t change that. They do not care about anything other than the short term profits from trimflation and price increases from cheap credit. The only way to get makers to give the people what they want is with carrot/stick.
“You WILL buy the Silverado/Ram/F-150. You WILL pay 75k. You WILL take an 84-month note and 5% apr.”
>Are you planning to drive or fly anywhere for Christmas?
Flying home from my jobsite. We’re hosting my family’s Christmas, so everyone is coming to us.
Which ties in with the earlier comment thread that begins here.
It took me an embarrassing amount of time to understand what you meant.
Are they going to use Jacobsen to make all anti-EV statements and Barra for pro-EV statements? I could see that working out pretty well.
Oh boy oh boy…
Aw, man.
I don’t travel for major holidays. Nothing on this planet will get me to change that policy
I wish I could find my comment from a while back where I said I couldn’t understand why the Stellantis board hadn’t fired Tavares yet. Sadly, I word vomit here far too much to dig through and find that one particular needle.
I’m driving 45 minutes to Grandma’s, then ~3 hours to a big Christmas light display (among other things), then ~5 to my brother’s since they’ll be with the other side of their family on Christmas itself. I’ll probably end up putting close to 1000 miles on the old Prius (or the truck if the weather looks iffy).
What’s the Christmas Light Display?
Bentleyville in Duluth, MN.
I would Lovitz if someone would explain the Tavares joke to me. I have a suspicion on what it’s about, but attempts to confirm run into a topic that appears to be scrubbed from the internet -something I didn’t think was possible.
Matt explained it in his article the day after Tavares got fired:
Thanks. Much simpler than I was thinking. I thought it was related to Tavares’s family. It’s barely possible to determine that he has one.
We don’t travel for Christmas. Our first Christmas as a couple was staying home and gorging on shabu shabu and macro lagers. This is the 11th year now. The tradition is in stone.
Nope, not going anywhere for Christmas. Well, technically about five miles to the friends who put on potluck dinner for a bunch of us Maine ex-pats here in God’s Waiting Room, FL. We all do Thanksgiving and Christmas together most years, about 15-20 of us. And beginning and end of season parties. They love to host gatherings. Then a friend from Maine is coming down Boxing Day to spend a week in the sunshine.
I travel for work, so I usually stay HOME when I am on vacation, and I always take both holiday weeks off every year.
I am thinking of taking a long weekend trip in January to visit friends in Seattle though.
My aunt and uncle down in GWR, FL want me to visit but it’s easier for both them and me (and my work…) if I go in January or February so that’s the plan.
No doubt. Travelling at the holidays SUUCKS. On the rare occasion I have had a work trip the week before Turkey Day or Christmas I have always deeply regreted it.
Jan-Feb is the best time to come down here. Though this year we are getting Jan weather a month early. Has been absolutely glorious outside. 70F every day. Last year it stayed hot until New Years.
We;’re Vancouver BC for NYE but after shopping for trains we’re driving. Train schedule was too brutal (early departure or super-late arrival in both directions).
We’re planning to drive a few hours away for Christmas, but we also planned to do the same for Thanksgiving and the first snowfall brought out the idiocy in drivers and we nearly got run off the road three times in the first half hour of the drive, so we turned around and stayed home.