GM President Warns Elon Musk About Tesla's Pricing, Also Says He Admires Him

Mark Reuss says he has a lot of respect for startups that “just go and make a car.” In his opinion, this kind of business is not an easy one. Being heavily regulated, you must be stubborn to succeed. His belief stands with General Motors being able to deliver on its promises, even though the company started to implement preorders and online shopping just like its smaller competitors. Looking at stock market value, GM is standing at a little under $71 billion, while Tesla is facing a downward momentum and still is above the $905 billion threshold.

While asked by Jason Stein what he thinks of Musk’s opinion on old carmakers like GM, Reuss answers by pointing out Musk “has done a remarkable job” and overcame the “manufacturing hell” from previous years. He declares himself an admirer. But Reuss also underlines that at some point everyone will stop buying credits from Tesla.

These regulatory credits mentioned by the GM President were introduced as a mean for supporting automakers in shifting toward making EVs. They’re not optional. You either have enough, or your company will pay hefty fines. Musk’s company builds only fully electric cars, so it gets them for free. Having too many and other automakers not having enough meant Tesla could just make huge profits from selling their share of not polluting the world. This is rapidly changing now, as almost any manufacturer is slowly but surely switching to EVs.

“Don’t forget. You’re going to have to compete with legacy vehicle makers from the industry that were buying credits. This is changing rapidly, I think. You’re going to have to compete on a lower price point, with a lower margin, high volume, high scale vehicle if you’re going to be a full-service automaker to get that advantage. That’s what you see us doing with our purpose-built EVs. And I think this is a huge advantage over a long period of time,” said Mark Reuss.

GM President also says he ignored the "shade" thrown by Musk on legacy carmakers by pointing out he believes in “deeds, not words school.”

Mark Reuss leads the company’s regional operations, including North America, South America, China and General Motors International. GM’s Global Product Development, Global Design, Global Quality and Operational Excellence teams also report to Reuss.

Elon Musk recently accused the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of improperly targeting Tesla with an "unrelenting" investigation just to punish Musk for being a critic of the government. On top of that, it took Joe Biden more than a year to publicly acknowledge Tesla. This doesn’t look good for the American EV car company, especially when you consider its CEO’s involvement in crypto related activities that are not at all easily indulged by the SEC.

Established carmakers won’t wait a second more before getting Tesla’s market share, if Musk doesn’t adapt fast enough to the current business picture.