Photo: Elon Musk Quotes on Facebook
Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk has been busy traveling around Europe for a couple of weeks now. One of the places he visited was Berlin, Germany where the billionaire inventor met 30 government representatives at a parliamentary breakfast where they talked about the future of mobility.
It clearly was a business meeting that would see the visionary California-based entrepreneur discussing all things Tesla. He even had a "chat" with German Economics Minister Sigmar Gabriel apparently.
In an interview Elon Musk did with renown German business newspaper Handelsblatt, Tesla Motors’ CEO mentioned that even if their sales plan were not that great in Europe’s biggest economic power so far, things would change in the future.
However, before we get into the specifics, we would want to start with the end of the interview. At some point, Musk was asked if he is worried about the former employees who went to Apple. To this, he responded: “Important engineers? They have hired people we’ve fired. We always jokingly call Apple the ‘Tesla Graveyard.’ If you don’t make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple. I’m not kidding.”
Getting back to real facts, Tesla Motors CEO believes that one of the reasons only 700 Tesla Model S vehicles have sold in Germany in total since 2014, instead of the 300 cars per week Musk promised is the lack of incentives.
“Government incentives would be helpful, no question. For a very large auto market, Germany has the worst incentives for electric vehicles. I think the government is listening too closely to what the big German automakers say. And if the big German automakers are wrong, then the wrong thing happens.”
Another reason things haven’t worked out so good in terms of sales in Germany is the fact that the EV’s operation at high speed wasn’t that great until recently. After all, the country is not just a big auto market, but also one of the few nations where people experience high speeds. Due to the new configuration, however, enough Superchargers in Germany and the rest of Europe, this should no longer be a problem, Musk believes.
When asked about Porsche’s recently unveiled competitor, the Mission E, Musk hinted at the possibility the Stuttgart-based carmaker used Tesla’s patents that, as we all know, the company has opened for use by anybody. If this topic could have been touchy, then the problem German carmakers are facing today clearly was. “The senior management is too old-school. They’re not accepting the future yet. Germany needs to move to the next level of technology,” said the business magnate.
In an interview Elon Musk did with renown German business newspaper Handelsblatt, Tesla Motors’ CEO mentioned that even if their sales plan were not that great in Europe’s biggest economic power so far, things would change in the future.
However, before we get into the specifics, we would want to start with the end of the interview. At some point, Musk was asked if he is worried about the former employees who went to Apple. To this, he responded: “Important engineers? They have hired people we’ve fired. We always jokingly call Apple the ‘Tesla Graveyard.’ If you don’t make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple. I’m not kidding.”
Getting back to real facts, Tesla Motors CEO believes that one of the reasons only 700 Tesla Model S vehicles have sold in Germany in total since 2014, instead of the 300 cars per week Musk promised is the lack of incentives.
“Government incentives would be helpful, no question. For a very large auto market, Germany has the worst incentives for electric vehicles. I think the government is listening too closely to what the big German automakers say. And if the big German automakers are wrong, then the wrong thing happens.”
Another reason things haven’t worked out so good in terms of sales in Germany is the fact that the EV’s operation at high speed wasn’t that great until recently. After all, the country is not just a big auto market, but also one of the few nations where people experience high speeds. Due to the new configuration, however, enough Superchargers in Germany and the rest of Europe, this should no longer be a problem, Musk believes.
When asked about Porsche’s recently unveiled competitor, the Mission E, Musk hinted at the possibility the Stuttgart-based carmaker used Tesla’s patents that, as we all know, the company has opened for use by anybody. If this topic could have been touchy, then the problem German carmakers are facing today clearly was. “The senior management is too old-school. They’re not accepting the future yet. Germany needs to move to the next level of technology,” said the business magnate.
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