While much of the conversation in the news cycles about Elon Musk today centers around Space Exploration Technologies Corp (NASDAQ:SPCX), EV giant Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) still remains an integral part of the billionaire’s business strategy.
While Tesla has increasingly emphasized AI, autonomous driving and humanoid robots like Optimus, investor Ross Gerber, the co-founder of investment firm Gerber Kawasaki and one of the early backers of the company, has publicly voiced his criticism of the pivot.
Speaking to Benzinga, the investor spoke in detail about Tesla’s challenges, pivot away from cars, Musk’s Robotaxi ambitions, a possible SpaceX merger and more. Here’s how the conversation transpired.
Ross Gerber Is Frustrated With Elon Musk’s Claims
As Musk, during SpaceX’s earnings call, predicted that the commercial spaceflight company could report $1 trillion in revenue annually as early as 2029, Gerber expressed skepticism about the claim.
“Considering the fact that my car still can’t drive itself, and he’s been saying it’s going to drive itself for 10 years, and I’ve been testing full self-driving for over five years, personally, I’m so frustrated with it,” he said, adding that he was not keen on believing Musk’s timelines.
“We know that he was going to make 20 million cars a year five years ago,” the investor said, but Tesla was “stuck at two [million].” Gerber also expressed frustration with Tesla’s Robotaxi ramp. “We’re supposed to have cabs in all major cities right now. We don’t have one cab that works,” he said, expressing his frustration as he called the billionaire’s claims “delusional.”
SpaceX-Tesla Merger May Be Unfair For SpaceX Investors
“I was more bullish on this [SpaceX merger] idea, before it went public than now,” Gerber said when asked about a possible merger between the two enterprises. He expanded upon his view by saying that it was a “huge conflict having two public companies” that were “trading at different valuations.”
He said that if a merger were to happen, Tesla’s investors would be getting the “short end of the stick,” touting SpaceX as a “much better investment” for people right now when compared to Tesla.
“Tesla shareholders have been very loyal to Elon despite making no money for a long time. They’re going to want a premium on the price,” Gerber said. “So if Tesla right now is trading at $1.3 trillion and SpaceX is trading at almost $2 trillion, it gets complicated,” he added.
On the other hand, Gerber said that “if SpaceX bought Tesla at the current price, it would be dilutive to SpaceX. So SpaceX shareholders get screwed,” adding that SpaceX was currently trading with a “forward PE” of 80, while “Tesla’s forward PE is like 150.”
He then said that estimates for Tesla went down because of disappointing earnings, but SpaceX estimates remained the same. Ultimately, Gerber shared that any question about mergers rests upon whether SpaceX’s board, which is Musk and close associates, was willing to be “completely diluted” in the transaction.
“What I fear is when the company combines and the market revalues it much lower because it’s not worth $4 trillion,” he said, calling the valuation a “joke.” Gerber also pointed to possible legal troubles following such deals. “You got two public companies, you get sued, because it’s a total conflict of interest, which he created,” the investor said.
“But you know, I think that’s inevitable,” he said. “I think in the end, a lot of people get screwed out of all this. And Elon will be the big winner. That’s what I think,” Gerber said.
The Public Does Not Like Elon
Gerber lamented Tesla’s pivot away from vehicles to robotics and AI. Musk does not want to “sell cars to the public because the public doesn’t like him,” the Gerber Kawasaki co-founder said. “He’s made his decision.”
The investor then said that he would invest in marketing and advertising and “double Tesla sales” if he was “the President of Tesla” and he “took over the car business and the energy storage business.”
“There’s no more Elon, you know,” he said, “Now we’re selling cars and maybe I’d reintroduce the Model S; I’d do the $25,000 car. I would make a truck that people would drive, you know, Tesla would do well,” Gerber said, outlining his strategy to help Tesla focus back on its EV business.
SpaceX Merger in Parts?
Still, Gerber was not opposed to some parts of Tesla merging with SpaceX, like the robots and the computational endeavors. The investor said that such a move would “align the businesses more, where the AI and all the moon shots are in SpaceX and Tesla could sell EVs and battery storage,” he said.
Gerber also opined that leaning into the EV and energy storage business, with soaring oil and gas prices, would be beneficial for the company. “Tesla still builds the best EVs,” the investor said. “I think Tesla would double if it wasn’t involved with Elon,” he added.
He also criticized Tesla’s current vision, where it was a “world where we don’t have choice on how we get places,” referring to a lack of choice in Tesla’s lineup. “All vehicles look the same,” calling it “dystopian.”
“All Teslas are three colors,” he said, and then proceeded to point to a third-party market for wraps dedicated to Tesla vehicles because “nobody wants the same f**king Tesla,” he said.
Construction Makes Full-Self Driving Extremely Difficult
“It’s really nice to have Full-Self Driving,” Gerber said as the conversation shifted to self-driving, but the investor added that it would be “great” if the system worked perfectly. Gerber predicted that it could one day work well, but that day was “not around the corner.”
Speaking about the difficulty of navigating construction zones, an issue that has also presented challenges for autonomous-driving systems such as Alphabet Inc.’s (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG) Waymo, he said that driving on those types of roads was “extremely difficult” for the system.
Gerber pointed out his personal experience of driving with FSD around his neighborhood in the Palisades, where roads were blocked due to construction. “It’s a mayhem,” he said.
“It [Tesla FSD] doesn’t know what to do because it does not understand people waving at you,” he said. He also said that Waymo avoided the problem by taking a different route, which was longer and “annoying.”
Elon Musk Is ‘Stuck’
Towards the end of the conversation, the investor said that Musk was “stuck” at this moment in time. “He’s got to get Starship working, he’s got to get Full Self-Driving working, he’s struggling to sell cars,” he said.
Gerber also said that if the Iran war were to end soon and oil prices would go down, Tesla’s sales would also experience a downward trend. “He’s got all of these projects simultaneously, he’s digging holes in the desert and nothing’s really working,” Gerber said, predicting an “extremely challenging” stage for the billionaire in the coming months.
Instead, Gerber said that investors should focus on what Musk was investing his money in and invest in those things. “Chips, equipment, build out stuff, infrastructure,” he said. “Look at it this way, Elon’s a great customer, but I don’t know if you want to be the investor,” he added.
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Photo courtesy: Rokas Tenys on Shutterstock.com
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