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Crypto Entrepreneurs Fail to Capture Elon Musk’s Attention With $600,000 Goat Statue

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AUSTIN, Texas—Even as a cold night started to settle outside

Tesla

‘s headquarters here on Saturday, a group of cryptocurrency entrepreneurs had no plans to leave until

Elon Musk,

the man they named their currency after, accepted a 12,000-pound sculpture of a Mr. Musk-headed goat riding a rocket.

It is the latest stunt in the cryptocurrency space, where jokes and memes about digital currencies regularly flood social media. But a 6-ton sculpture as a marketing gimmick isn’t so common.

The creators of Elon GOAT say the name of their cryptocurrency was inspired by their respect for Mr. Musk. They and his other fans think he is the “greatest of all time,” or a “GOAT.” They took the admiration literally, spending $600,000 to create a sculpture of Mr. Musk’s head, wearing a gold-plated dogecoin necklace on a goat’s body. The rocket can move, pointing to the sky as if it is taking off. Gas lines run through it so that flames can shoot out of the back.

They trucked it to

Tesla Inc.’s

headquarters, in hopes Mr. Musk would accept the gift. The creators are calling called the event “GOATSgiving.”

Elon Musk has warned of dire financial challenges facing Twitter, the social-media company he took over for $44 billion in October. WSJ’s Mark Maurer explains how the company is trying to fix its finances and avoid a potential bankruptcy. Photo Illustration: Laura Kammermann

But about two hours after the co-founders of Elon GOAT parked the sculpture right outside the Tesla building, there was no sign of Mr. Musk.

Dustin Dailey, a security officer at Tesla, walked over to a group of about 15 people and said they couldn’t accept the sculpture on Mr. Musk’s behalf, but would find a spot for it on their property if Mr. Musk gave the thumbs-up.

But so far Mr. Musk hasn’t given any indication he would accept it or whether he knew the sculpture was there. Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment

“I am fairly certain he does know about it,” said Mr. Dailey of the sculpture. “It’s all over Twitter.”

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Alec Wolvert, an Elon GOAT co-founder and chief marketing officer, said they were planning on camping out on a piece of public land off a toll road that overlooks the headquarters until Mr. Musk accepted the sculpture.

“We’re gonna stay here as long as possible,” Mr. Wolvert said. “I even heard some people say they were going to strap themselves to it.”

The idea of the sculpture came together last year. “It was an evening joke that kind of just came to fruition,” said

Ashley Sansalone,

an Elon GOAT co-founder.

Metal sculptor Kevin Stone spent nearly six months working on the sculpture of Elon Musk.



Photo:

Kevin Stone

The cryptocurrency entrepreneurs asked Kevin Stone, a metal sculptor in British Columbia, Canada, to make the giant sculpture with Mr. Musk’s head. The goal: to get Mr. Musk to tweet about the sculpture to his more than 118 million followers and draw attention to their cryptocurrency, the Elon GOAT.

“Elon tweeting us would legitimize the token,” said Mr. Sansalone, 40 years old.

Mr. Sansalone said he works on the token full time and previously ran a construction company and traded energy. Unlike bitcoin, ether or dogecoin, the Elon GOAT token is far from a household cryptocurrency name. It is ranked well outside the largest cryptocurrencies by market value, according to CoinMarketCap.

Mr. Musk’s head, which took nearly six months to complete was made by Mr. Stone. The goat body and rocket were made by others in Phoenix to speed up the project, Mr. Sansalone said. Then all the pieces were put together and attached to the back of a 70-foot long semi-truck trailer.

“When I first saw the statue my jaw dropped,” said DeMarco Hill, 51, who spotted it in September in Goodyear, Ariz., where he lives. He grabbed his 12-year-old son and they followed it. “It was something you’ve never seen before in your life.”

Mr. Hill, a trucker who owns his own company, Stay Ready Trucking, thought the stunt was so entertaining that he found Mr. Sansalone and asked if he could participate. Mr. Sansalone said Mr. Hill was needed because only someone with a special license could drive around the heaping pile of metal.

He has since driven the sculpture through California, Arizona and Washington, before bringing it to Texas. People who drive by honk their horns or give a thumbs-up, Mr. Hill said. 

“If I pull up to the side of the road it’s like people crowding around,” he said. “It gets crazy.”

Mr. Sansalone said the sculpture has mostly gotten a positive response. He hasn’t heard anyone mistaken Mr. Musk’s face for someone else. “I would say he is probably the most relevant person on the planet right now,” Mr. Sansalone said about Mr. Musk, the world’s richest person who recently bought Twitter Inc. for $44 billion.

In September, the sculpture sat in front of Tesla’s office in Palo Alto, Calif., during the company’s artificial-intelligence conference. Tesla employees crossed the street to take pictures with the sculpture, Mr. Sansalone said. Mr. Musk was at the conference, according to Twitter posts he made, and Mr. Sansalone assumes the billionaire saw the sculpture. 

“All there was to look at was a lit-up rocket erected in the middle of the street,” he said. 

On Saturday night, the group remained hopeful.

At one point in the evening, a group of about 20 people who were waiting outside started to chant “Elon claim your goat” in the hopes that the god of crypto, as one co-founder put it, would hear them.

“I’m a huge fan of Elon and I want to give this man his flowers while he’s alive,” said Aamir Manzoor, a 36-year-old from Toronto who is a holder of Elon GOAT. “He’s done a lot for the world.”

Write to Joseph Pisani at joseph.pisani@wsj.com, Alyssa Lukpat at alyssa.lukpat@wsj.com and Adolfo Flores at adolfo.flores@wsj.com

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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Business

Opinion: Tesla investors have been the biggest losers in Elon Musk’s Twitter deal, and those losses continue

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Twitter users have complained a lot about Elon Musk’s early moves after taking control of the social network, but their complaints seem tiny compared with what Tesla Inc. investors have had to suffer.

As the U.S. focused on election returns Tuesday evening, Tesla
TSLA,
-7.17%
Chief Executive Musk tried to slip through disclosure of his long-awaited stock sales, revealing that he had sold nearly $4 billion of Tesla stock in the previous three trading sessions. Musk did not publicly address the stock sales nor his intentions to sell more within 24 hours of the disclosure, even while tweeting roughly 20 times in that period.

[MarketWatch asked him on Twitter to address the sales twice, and did not receive a reply; Tesla disbanded its media-relations department years ago.]

The sales fueled a further downturn in shares of the electric-vehicle maker on Wednesday, when the stock fell 7.2% to $177.59, its lowest closing price since November 2020. Tesla is currently down 49.6% on the year, which would be far and away the worst year yet for the stock — the previous record annual decline was 2016, when it fell 11%.

The problems for Tesla investors go far beyond Musk selling its stock so that he could overpay for a company with limited growth prospects and a host of other problems, but the poor optics certainly start there.

“He sold caviar to buy a $2 slice of pizza,” said Dan Ives, a Wedbush Securities analyst.

Ives was one of several on Wall Street to predict Musk would need to sell more shares to either close a gap in his financing of the $44 billion deal to buy the social-media company, or provide additional operating funds. In a telephone conversation Wednesday, he said the Twitter move is “a nightmare that just won’t end for Tesla investors.”

One reason it isn’t ending is that Musk’s need for cash in relation to Twitter is not done with the recent sales, portending more in the future. Musk said in a tweet late last week that Twitter had a “massive drop in revenue” due to activists pressuring advertisers to pull their ads, and he will have to continue paying the employees he did not lay off while servicing a debt load that analysts have estimated will cost him $1 billion a year, much more than Twitter has cleared in profit in the past two years. Twitter reported a net loss of $221 million in 2021, and a net loss of $1.13 billion for 2020.

Read more about Elon Musk potentially pumping Tesla stock ahead of a sale

“The first two weeks of ownership have been a ‘Friday the 13th‘ horror show,” Ives said, adding that the verification plan and mass layoffs of 50% of employees — and then trying to rehire some of the engineers, developers and cybersecurity experts — was “really stupid.” And, according to CNBC, Musk has also pulled more than 50 Tesla engineers, many from the Autopilot team, to work at Twitter.

“But it’s consistent with how this thing has been handled,” Ives said, adding that Musk is “way over his skis” with the Twitter acquisition.

Amid all the chaos of his first two weeks running Twitter, how much time has Musk had to run his other companies? Musk was already splitting his Tesla time with SpaceX, The Boring Company, Neuralink and many other endeavors, and now he has taken on the gargantuan task of turning a social-media company that has never been highly profitable, nor valuable, into something worth the $44 billion he paid.

The effort, Ives said, has “tarnished his brand,” which in turn has a big risk of hurting Tesla. Many investors have bought into the Tesla story because they believe Musk is a genius and they back his vision of electrifying the automotive industry. Twitter does not meld into that vision, except as a platform to spout his opinions, vitriol and promote more wacky concepts.

Since Musk began his quest to buy the company, he has endured more criticism than ever before, with even some fans starting to throw shade or question his decisions. Investor Gary Black, managing partner of the Future Fund LLC, for example, pointed out that Tesla’s top engineers should not be running Twitter, where the news was getting worse.

Tesla is not a company that can just run itself at this point. Musk has claimed he did not want to be chief executive but that there was no one else to take over the car company, which is why he has served as CEO for years. It’s not clear, though, how much effort he actually has made at trying to recruit someone. Now, as Tesla faces its usual multitude of issues, he is off spending his time trying to turn Twitter into a payments company, or maybe a subscription company, or maybe an “everything app,” or whatever he comes up with tomorrow.

“Musk needs to look in the mirror and end this constant merry-go-round of Twitter overhang on the Tesla story, with his focus back on the golden child Tesla, which needs his time more than ever given the soft macro, production/delivery issues in China, and EV competition increasing from all corners of the globe,” Ives wrote in a note Wednesday, in which he reiterated an outperform rating on Tesla stock.

For Twitter to reach anywhere close to the valuation Musk paid for it, it’s going to need a ton of attention from a focused leader, but how can Musk be that leader and give Tesla the attention it deserves? The answer is he cannot, and is very likely to give the attention that Tesla needs to Twitter instead after committing $44 billion (not all of it his) to that endeavor. Tesla investors will be left staring at the sea of red that this year has wrought, and wondering if its leader is about to sell more shares to fund his other effort.



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Elon Musk Says Twitter Won’t Be ‘Free-for-All Hellscape,’ Addressing Advertisers’ Concerns

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Advertisers are concerned about the billionaire’s plans to soften content moderation and what they say are potential conflicts of interest in auto advertising, given that he is chief executive of

Tesla Inc.,

say people familiar with the situation.

Mr. Musk said this spring that as owner of Twitter he would reinstate former President

Donald Trump’s

account, which the platform suspended indefinitely after linking Mr. Trump’s comments to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. That would be a red line for some brands, said Kieley Taylor, global head of partnerships at GroupM, a leading ad-buying agency that represents blue-chip brands.

About a dozen of GroupM’s clients, which own an array of well-known consumer brands, have told the agency to pause all their ads on Twitter if Mr. Trump’s account is reinstated, Ms. Taylor said. Others are in wait-and-see mode. Ms. Taylor said she expects to hear from many more clients if Mr. Trump’s account returns.

“That doesn’t mean that we won’t be entertaining lots of emails and phone calls as soon as a transaction goes through,” Ms. Taylor said. “I anticipate we’ll be busy.”

In a message to advertisers on Twitter on Thursday, Mr. Musk said he was buying the company to “have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner.” He said Twitter “cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences!” Mr. Musk said in addition to following laws, Twitter must be “warm and welcoming to all.”

He said Twitter aims to be a platform that “strengthens your brand and grows your enterprise.”

Twitter’s chief customer officer, Sarah Personette, tweeted that she had a discussion with Mr. Musk on Wednesday evening. “Our continued commitment to brand safety for advertisers remains unchanged,” she wrote. “Looking forward to the future!”

Mr. Trump has said he wouldn’t rejoin Twitter even if allowed. Representatives for Tesla and Mr. Trump didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Musk has completed the acquisition of Twitter, according to people familiar with the matter, after a monthslong legal battle in which he tried to back out of the $44 billion deal he agreed to in April. The judge overseeing the legal fight had said if the deal didn’t close by Friday she would schedule a November trial.

Twitter sent an email to some ad buyers earlier this week letting them know that the company is working with “the buyer” to close the acquisition by Friday and to acknowledge that Twitter is aware that advertisers have a lot of questions, according to the email, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The email, which didn’t name Mr. Musk, said Twitter would work “with the potential buyer to answer quickly.”

Advertising provided 89% of Twitter’s $5.08 billion revenue in 2021. Mr. Musk has said he hates advertising. In a series of tweets earlier this year, he suggested Twitter should move toward subscriptions and remove ads from Twitter Blue, a premium program that gives users additional features. 

Twitter will become a private company if Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover bid is approved. The move would allow Musk to make changes to the site. WSJ’s Dan Gallagher explains Musk’s proposed changes and the challenges he might face enacting them. Illustration: Jordan Kranse

Mr. Musk describes himself as a “free speech absolutist” and has said Twitter should be more cautious about removing tweets or banning users.

Mr. Musk may have reasons to avoid any drastic changes to Twitter’s ad business. Twitter will take on $13 billion in debt in the deal. The online-ad markets already are shaky, amid concerns about the economy, with

Snap Inc.

and

Alphabet Inc.

posting lower-than-expected revenue results for the September quarter.

Like other ad-supported social-media platforms, Twitter provides advertisers with adjacency controls, tools that are meant to ensure ads don’t appear next to certain content the brands deem objectionable.

Ask WSJ

The Musk-Twitter Deal

WSJ Financial Editor Charles Forelle sits down with Alexa Corse, WSJ reporter covering Twitter, at 1 p.m. ET Oct. 28 to discuss Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter. What does the future hold for the platform? And what does this deal mean for Mr. Musk’s business empire?

Some ad buyers said Twitter lags behind its competitors in providing so-called brand safety features. Joshua Lowcock, global chief media officer at UM Worldwide, an ad agency owned by Interpublic Group of Cos., called Twitter’s adjacency controls inadequate and “poorly thought through.”

Ad agency

Omnicom Media Group

evaluates the major social-media platforms’ progress on brand-safety tools every quarter. In July, Omnicom rated Twitter’s progress behind that of YouTube,

Facebook,

Instagram, TikTok and Reddit, according to a document reviewed by the Journal. Robert Pearsall, managing director of social activation at Omnicom Media Group, said Twitter has made agreements to improve its brand-safety controls to meet Omnicom’s standards, but it hasn’t introduced those changes to the market yet.

“There are significant concerns about the implications of a possible change to content moderation policy,” he said. Twitter has said it is working on tools to give advertisers a better idea of where their ads appear.

Advertising provided 89% of Twitter’s $5.08 billion revenue last year.



Photo:

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Automotive manufacturers have expressed concerns about advertising on Twitter under Mr. Musk’s ownership, given his role at electric-vehicle juggernaut Tesla, some ad buyers said. Advertisers often share data with Twitter and other platforms—on their own customers or people that are in the market for a car—to help target their ads at the right people. Some auto companies will be wary of doing so, out of concern that data may leak to Tesla, the buyers said.

Though Twitter relies on ad dollars, it isn’t one of the biggest players in the digital-ad economy. The company gets about 1.1% of U.S. digital-ad spending, according to Insider Intelligence, a much smaller slice than Google, Meta Platforms Inc. or

Amazon.com Inc.

Already, there have been signs of anxiety on Madison Avenue about Mr. Musk’s takeover of Twitter. In July, the company reported a 1% decrease in second-quarter revenue, which it blamed on uncertainty over the deal as well as broader pressures in the digital ad market.

Given Mr. Musk’s past remarks on advertising, some advertisers wonder if Mr. Musk may exit the ad business entirely.

“The question we keep getting asked is: Do we think Musk will turn off ads completely?” said UM Worldwide’s Mr. Lowcock.

Write to Patience Haggin at patience.haggin@wsj.com and Suzanne Vranica at suzanne.vranica@wsj.com

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8



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Business

Why BMW really decided to make batteries in the US

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CNN
 — 

BMW recently announced a $1.7 billion investment to help prepare its huge Spartanburg, South Carolina, factory to produce electric cars and SUVs. That sum included $700 million for the construction of a battery manufacturing plant nearby.

Spartanburg is BMW’s largest factory anywhere in the world. It employs 11,000 people and produces 40,000 SUVs a year, only 40% of which are sold in North America. The rest are exported to 120 other countries.

It’s one of a number of such announcements in recent months and years as automakers gear up to start producing more electric vehicles. Mercedes, Hyundai, Honda, and others have also announced battery plant construction projects in recent months. BMW’s announcement came after the passage of the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, which limits tax incentives for electric vehicles to those with largely US-based battery manufacturing and raw materials supplies.

The rules allow consumer tax credits only for electric vehicles that meet increasingly strict goals for US-based manufacturing of the vehicles themselves, as well as their batteries. They also require US sourcing for battery raw materials and they place caps on the cost of the vehicles and the income of the buyers. Buyers can get full tax credits only if they, and the vehicles, meet the requirements.

But that sort of regulation had no impact on BMW’s decision to locate battery production in South Carolina, BMW chairman Oliver Zipse said in an interview with CNN Business. Simple logistics were a far more important factor.

“You will not fly hundred of kilograms of batteries around the world or put them on a ship,” he said. “You’re not going to do it. You’ll localize anyway.”

Not only were the IRA’s rules pushing American manufacturing unneeded, said Zipse, they also risk negative repercussions for the very American jobs they’re designed to protect, he said.

The IRA provides no benefit for vehicles, regardless of how “American made” they are, if they aren’t sold inside the US. More importantly, though, protectionist regulations attempting to wall off American-made vehicles for American buyers can spark retaliation, endangering valuable export business, said Zipse.

“You can never make a regulation without looking at the consequences from other regulators,” he said. “And I only warn that we get a tit-for-tat regulation.”

And, simply, as a practical matter, it’s difficult to wall off automaker’s supply chains in the way the IRA would seem to demand, Zipse said.

“The assumption that you can incentivize an industry which is completely from A to Z inside one region in the world, in such a complex industry, like the car industry is a wrong assumption,” he said.

Zipse also warned of the possible unintended consequences of regulations, like those in some US states and in Europe, that ban sales of non-zero-emission vehicles after a certain date. For one thing, it could mean overall industry sales will decline.

“We do not believe that this one drivetrain will make up the complete market of today’s size,” he said.

Not all consumers will be able to have electric vehicle chargers at home, Zipse said, so many could decide, instead, to keep their gasoline cars longer or buy used gas-powered cars.

Some automakers, like BMW competitors General Motors and Mercedes-Benz, are apparently not worried about that possibility of shrinking sales and have announced plans to go all-electric by a set future date. BMW has never said publicly that it intends to make only electric vehicles after any certain time.

Unlike some automakers, such as GM and Volkswagen, that make electric vehicles on distinct engineering platforms entirely different from their gasoline cars, BMW engineers its vehicles so they can be produced as electric, plug-in hybrid, or purely gasoline-powered. BMW executives tout this sort of flexibility to respond to market demands for different types of vehicles.

Instead, he said, regulators should impose gradually more stringent emissions restrictions while leaving it up to automakers how best to reach those targets, as regulators have done in the past. To date, that approach has not halted increasing global warming.

Zipse insisted that BMW can manage whatever regulators decide, however.

“We can easily ramp them up,” Zipse said of increasing regulatory demand for electric vehicles. “All our factories are qualified for building EVs. We have a flexible approach.”

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Business

Opinion: Elon Musk pumps Tesla stock with ridiculous $4 trillion target. Is a dump coming next?

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Another Tesla Inc. earnings call, and another fanciful Elon Musk prediction that likely encouraged yet another open file at the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday.

The chief executive of Tesla Inc.
TSLA,
+0.84%
told investors Wednesday that he believes the valuation of the electric-car maker will exceed the combined market capitalization of the two most valuable companies in the world: Apple Inc.
AAPL,
+0.08%
and Saudi Arabian Oil Co.
2222,
+0.42%.

“I am of the opinion that we can far exceed Apple’s current market cap,” Musk said. “In fact, I see a potential path for Tesla to be worth more than Apple and Saudi Aramco combined.”

Based on Wednesday’s closing prices, the combined market capitalization of those two companies is about $4.4 trillion U.S. dollars. But at least he added a caveat — “That doesn’t mean it will happen or that it will be easy, in fact it will be very difficult, require a lot of work, very creative new products, expansion and always good luck.”

Full earnings coverage: Elon Musk teases massive Tesla stock buyback as CFO trims forecast for annual deliveries and stock falls

This type of outrageous prediction is not new for Musk. He already predicted that Tesla would be worth as much as Apple, and its market cap now is roughly the same size as Apple’s was then, though his explanation for why Tesla would spike to that level was way off.

The situation Musk is in right now, though, is new. As the soap opera that has erupted from his deal to buy Twitter Inc.
TWTR,
+0.10%
draws to a close, he is believed to need somewhere between $5 billion and $8 billion to finish off that deal, as our colleagues at Barron’s recently reported, and his only real avenue to that kind of cash is to sell Tesla stock.

Musk was precluded from selling shares before Tesla’s earnings report due to SEC rules, so what better way to try and pump Tesla’s stock before that blackout ended than to make some far-out predictions on the company’s earnings call?

From Barron’s: A Tesla stock sale is coming. We know who, why and when, but not how much.

A $4 trillion-plus price target wasn’t the only eye-opening claim Musk made in Wednesday’s call. He also told investors that he expected Tesla to perform the first stock buyback in its corporate history next year, and a large one at that: $5 billion to $10 billion.

“Even in a downside scenario next year, given next year is very difficult, we still have the ability to do a $5 [billion] to $10 billion buyback. This is obviously pending board review and approval,” he said. “So it’s likely that we will do some meaningful buyback.”

It is very odd to announce a share repurchase plan before it is approved and officially put in place by a board of directors, though sharing the news early is not automatically a violation of securities laws, said Stephen Diamond, an associate professor at Santa Clara University School of Law.

“Best practices would suggest waiting until you have your ducks in a row before making such an announcement, but I doubt it creates any obvious legal problems,” he said.

He added that the Tesla board is likely seeking approval from its auditors and legal counsel for the share repurchase, which would be why it isn’t approved yet.

“There is an accounting test under Delaware law that the company must meet in order to buy back shares,” Diamond said in an email. “Generally, it can only buy back shares if there is a ‘surplus’ available. To assess that would require support from their internal finance team to the board and likely as well outside opinions from their auditors and legal counsel.” 

While early disclosure of buyback plans would not register alarms at the SEC office automatically, these types of pronouncements from Musk specifically will perk up some ears at the regulator’s offices. Musk has already faced recriminations from the agency for earlier statements, and been targeted for failing to live up to the settlement he agreed to in that case. Musk is also reportedly actively being investigated for his behavior as he moved to acquire Twitter, which Twitter seemed to confirm in a legal filing earlier this month.

More: Elon Musk’s legal battle with Twitter may be over, but his war with the SEC continues

On the call, Musk would only say that he is “excited about the Twitter situation,” while admitting that “myself and the other investors are obviously overpaying for it right now.”

Tesla officials did not respond to a request for comment or answer a question about whether Musk does need to sell more Tesla shares to complete the Twitter deal.

The question for Tesla investors, though, is whether they have overpaid for Tesla stock before another round of stock sales from Musk, who has already offloaded billions in shares in the past year, which reportedly resulted in yet another SEC inquiry. On Wednesday, though, shares fell more than 6% in after-hours trading despite the chief executive’s boosterism, which seemed to be overshadowed by a revenue miss and trimmed forecast.

Perhaps investors are finally seeing through Musk’s earnings-call bloviating that boosted the value of Tesla’s shares in the past. But if Musk sells Tesla shares in the coming days after trying to talk up the company’s value, it won’t be the investors who knock on his door, it might be the SEC yet again.

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Tesla, BYD Break China Delivery Records as EV Rivalry Goes Global

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HONG KONG—

Tesla Inc.

TSLA 0.17%

and its Chinese rival BYD Co. have each broken their monthly records for deliveries of electric vehicles in China as the global competition between the world’s biggest makers of new-energy autos intensifies.

Tesla, the world’s biggest EV maker, delivered more than 83,000 Model 3s and Model Ys from its recently upgraded Shanghai plant in September, data released Sunday by the China Passenger Car Association show. The American EV maker controlled by

Elon Musk

had been ahead of BYD in China before production was disrupted by Covid-19 outbreaks in the country.

BYD made almost 95,000 EV deliveries in September—a record high for the Shenzhen-based company. BYD’s sales, including hybrids, totaled 201,000 units in September, also a record.

The rivalry between the world’s leading EV companies intensified this year after BYD—which counts Mr. Musk’s fellow billionaire

Warren Buffett

among its key investors—abandoned the production of traditional gasoline-powered vehicles to fully focus on new-energy cars.

Production capacity at Tesla’s Shanghai plant was recently increased.



Photo:

Qilai Shen/Bloomberg News

BYD has dominated the Chinese domestic market this year, defying supply-chain disruptions and shortages of chips and raw materials for batteries that have plagued other manufacturers, including Tesla. The company’s monthly year-over-year sales of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles have risen more than threefold on average this year.

Behind the growth is the company’s ability to produce its own batteries as well as many of the parts its vehicles use, ensuring stability along its supply chain.

Tesla, meanwhile, lost ground after suffering production hiccups from Covid-19 lockdowns in Shanghai earlier this year.

In July, Tesla suspended operations for several days to upgrade its assembly lines for increased production capacity. Its Shanghai plant can now crank out more than 750,000 units a year, the company said at the time.

Tesla said last week it delivered 343,830 EVs globally during the quarter ended Sept. 30. Vehicles from Shanghai made up about 54% of its global deliveries during this period, up from 44% in the second quarter, according to calculations based on the association’s data.

The climate bill recently passed by the Senate could knock thousands of dollars off the sticker price of electric vehicles, but it’s also redefining which cars are eligible. WSJ’s George Downs breaks down the new rules and what it means for the EV industry. Illustration: George Downs

While Tesla tussles with BYD in its home market, the Shenzhen-based auto maker is also expanding abroad. Last week, German rental-car company

Sixt SE

said BYD will supply its fleet with several thousand EVs by the end of this year. The initial commitment will pave the way for the German company to purchase a total of 100,000 EVs from BYD by the end of 2028, Sixt said.

BYD’s foray into Europe began with supplying electric buses for public transport in countries including the U.K., Sweden and Spain. Last year, it exported 100 Tang sports-utility EVs to Norway.

This past summer BYD announced partnerships with dealers in several European countries to distribute its vehicles. By September this year, BYD began selling its EVs to customers in Australia. It exported some 7,000 EVs or plug-in hybrids from China that month, according to company data.

The company announced European presale prices for three of its popular passenger EV models two weeks ago. They will be made available to customers in Scandinavian countries but also in Luxembourg and Germany, the home turf for legacy car brands such as Volkswagen AG. Sales will roll out to France and the U.K. by the end of this year, the company said.

And as it seeks to capture the global market for EVs, BYD is moving to produce more passenger cars overseas. Last month it secured a deal with Thai industrial-estate developer WHA Group to set up an overseas passenger EV factory on the east coast of Thailand. The plant is expected to deliver 150,000 passenger EVs in 2024, WHA said at the time.

Meanwhile, Mr. Musk weighed in on China’s thorny territorial issues during an interview with the Financial Times. Mr. Musk suggested that a special administrative zone should be set up for the self-governed island of Taiwan, similar to Hong Kong’s relationship with the Chinese mainland. His comments were welcomed by Chinese Ambassador to Washington Qin Gang, who on Sunday tweeted his thanks to Mr. Musk for the suggestion.

China regards Taiwan as an integral part of its territory, to be reunited with the motherland by force, if necessary.

Write to Selina Cheng at selina.cheng@wsj.com

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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Elon Musk Unveils Prototype of Tesla’s Humanoid Robot Optimus, Says It Will Cost Less Than a Car

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Mr. Musk first laid out the vision for the robot, called Optimus, a little more than a year ago at Tesla’s first-ever AI day. At the time, a dancer in a costume appeared onstage. This time, Mr. Musk presented a prototype at the gathering that unfolded late Friday in Palo Alto, Calif.

The early prototype, which still had wires showing, took a few steps, waved to the crowd, and performed some basic dance moves.

Tesla’s robot is expected to cost less than a car, with a price point below $20,000, Elon Musk said.



Photo:

Tesla

Mr. Musk quipped the robot could do a lot more, but limited its activity for fear it could fall on its face. The robot’s appearance on stage marked the first time it operated without a tether, Mr. Musk said.

“Our goal is to make a useful humanoid robot as quickly as possible,” he said, with the aspiration of being able to make them at high volume and low cost. “It is expected to cost much less than a car,” he said, with a price point below $20,000. Customers should be able to receive the robot, once ordered, in three to five years, Mr. Musk said. It isn’t yet for sale.

He later showed off a nonfunctioning, sleeker model that he said was closer to the production version.

“There’s still a lot of work to be done to refine Optimus,” he said, saying that the concept could evolve over time. “It won’t be boring.”

The battery-powered robot should be able to handle difficult chores, Tesla said, including lifting a half-ton, 9-foot concert grand piano. Mr. Musk added it would have conversational capabilities and feature safeguards to prevent wrongdoing by the machine.

Elon Musk last year unveiled the idea of the robot Optimus with a dancer in a costume.



Photo:

TESLA/via REUTERS

“I’m a big believer in AI safety,” said Mr. Musk, who has previously expressed concerns about how such technology could be used. He said he thinks there should be a regulatory authority at the government level.

The Tesla boss painted a vision of Optimus as helping Tesla make cars more efficiently, starting with simple tasks and then expanded uses. He has also suggested the robot could serve broader functions and potentially alleviate labor shortages.

“It will, I think, turn the whole notion of what’s an economy on its head, at the point at which you have no shortage of labor,” Mr. Musk said Aug. 4 at Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting. On Friday, he added: “It really is a fundamental transformation of civilization as we know it.”

Elon Musk unveiled a prototype of Tesla’s humanoid robot Optimus, part of an effort to shape perception of the company as more than just a car maker. The Tesla CEO said the robot is expected to cost less than a car. Photo: Tesla

When he first unveiled the Optimus concept, Mr. Musk said such a robot could have such an impact on the labor market it could make it necessary to provide a universal basic income, or a stipend to people without strings attached.

Tesla has also encountered problems with automation. Early efforts to rely heavily on automated tools to scale up vehicle production suffered setbacks, and the company had to rely more heavily than planned on factory workers. Mr. Musk later tweeted: “Yes, excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake. To be precise, my mistake. Humans are underrated.”

One of the big questions around Tesla’s humanoid robot is its central purpose, said

Chris Atkeson,

a Carnegie Mellon University robotics professor. If Tesla’s main goal is to improve manufacturing, a quadruped likely would have been easier to build than a humanoid robot, in part because additional legs make it easier to balance, he said.

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Mr. Musk, who has been instrumental in popularizing electric vehicles and pioneered landing rocket boosters with his company SpaceX, also has a record of making bold predictions that don’t immediately pan out. Three years ago at an event about automation, he projected that more than a million Tesla vehicles would be able to operate without a driver by the middle of 2020, positioning the company to launch a robot taxi service. That hasn’t happened.

Mr. Musk for some time has said Tesla aimed to be more than just a car company and reiterated that message on Friday. He called the company “a series of startups.”

Mr. Musk billed the latest event, like last year’s, as one aimed at recruiting engineers in fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics and chips.

Tesla has long bet on automation to keep the company ahead of competitors. The company’s cars are outfitted with an advanced driver-assistance system, known as Autopilot, that helps drivers with tasks such as maintaining a safe distance from other vehicles on the road and staying centered in a lane.

Tesla engineers detailed some of the AI work the company is doing, including to underpin its driver-assistance technology. Mr. Musk said the company’s development of a powerful, AI-focused computer could allow Tesla to offer the number-crunching capability as a service to others, not unlike cloud-computing offerings provided by the likes of

Amazon.com Inc.

The company is developing and selling an enhanced version of Autopilot that brings more automated driving into cities. Tesla calls the system Full Self-Driving, or FSD, although it doesn’t actually make vehicles autonomous and the company tells drivers to keep their hands on the wheel while operating the car.

Tesla said Friday that it now has 160,000 customers with the software. Mr. Musk said rollout of the technology beyond the U.S. and Canada depends on gaining regulatory approval, though it should be feasible from a technology perspective by year-end.

Tesla has steadily raised the price of FSD, which now retails for $15,000. AI has been at the heart of Tesla’s efforts to develop more advanced driver-assistance features and, eventually, fully autonomous vehicles.

Tesla said the software that is used to take on more driving functions also underpins operations of the humanoid robot.

Tesla’s pursuit of automation has increasingly come under scrutiny. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which regulates auto safety, opened a probe into Autopilot last year after a series of crashes involving Teslas that struck first-responder vehicles stopped for roadway emergencies.

Two U.S. senators have also asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether Tesla has been deceptive in its marketing of Autopilot and FSD.

The electric-car maker has long said that driving with Autopilot engaged is safer than doing so without it. Tesla points to internal data showing that crashes were less common when drivers were using Autopilot, though some researchers have criticized the company’s methodology.

Write to Meghan Bobrowsky at Meghan.Bobrowsky@wsj.com and Rebecca Elliott at rebecca.elliott@wsj.com

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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Business

Ford Confirms Layoffs, Says It Is Cutting About 3,000 Jobs

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Ford Motor Co.

F -5.04%

confirmed Monday it is laying off roughly 3,000 white-collar and contract employees, marking the latest in its efforts to slash costs as it makes a longer-range transition to electric vehicles.

Ford sent an internal email Monday to employees, saying it would begin notifying affected salaried and agency workers this week of the cuts. The email was viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The 1% reduction in Ford’s workforce of about 183,000 mostly targets employees in the U.S., Canada and India. About 2,000 of the targeted cuts will be salaried jobs at the Dearborn, Mich., auto maker. The remaining 1,000 employees are working in contract positions with outside agencies, the company said.

The cuts weren’t unexpected. The Wall Street Journal and other media outlets reported in July that layoffs were coming for white-collar staff as part of a broader restructuring to sharpen the car company’s focus on electric vehicles and the batteries that power them.

Ford shares closed down 3.9% each on Monday, after news of a $1.7 billion jury verdict in a case involving a rollover accident with one of the company’s F-250 pickup trucks that left two people dead.

The company’s email, signed by Executive Chair

Bill Ford

and Chief Executive

Jim Farley,

said Ford is changing the way it operates and redeploying resources as it embraces new technologies that weren’t previously core to its operations, such as developing advanced software for its vehicles. The job cuts are effective Sept. 1, a spokesman said.

“Building this future requires changing and reshaping virtually all aspects of the way we have operated for more than a century,” the internal message said.

Mr. Farley has said recently that Ford has too many employees, and that the existing workforce doesn’t have the expertise needed to transition to a portfolio of electric, software-laden vehicles.

He has said he aims to cut $3 billion in annual costs by 2026 as part of his goal to reach a 10% pretax profit margin by then, up from 7.3% last year.

Like many global auto makers, Ford is pouring money into electric vehicles in an effort to close the sales gap with

Tesla Inc.

The company has said it would spend about $50 billion through 2026 to develop EVs, targeting global sales of two million by then.

Mr. Farley earlier this year divided the company into separate divisions, including one to focus on electric vehicles and advanced technologies, and another to handle its traditional internal-combustion-vehicle lines.

He has said profits from its lineup of gasoline and diesel-engine vehicles will help fund the transition, but that part of the business must operate more efficiently.

Supply-chain issues and a shift toward electric vehicles have accelerated changes in the car-buying process. We visit a car dealer to see how consumers and sellers are adapting and what changes might be here to stay. Photo: Adam Falk/The Wall Street Journal

Write to Nora Eckert at nora.eckert@wsj.com

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the August 23, 2022, print edition as ‘Ford Cuts 3,000 White-Collar Jobs.’

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Business

Elon Musk says he’s buying Manchester United — but if it’s a joke, the SEC is unlikely to laugh

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Last Updated: Aug. 16, 2022 at 9:27 p.m. ET

First Published: Aug. 16, 2022 at 9:09 p.m. ET

Elon Musk is either getting into international soccer or else may have scored an own goal and teed up more trouble from the SEC.

In a tweet late Tuesday, the Tesla Inc. TSLA chief executive said: “Also, I’m buying Manchester United ur welcome,” referring to the iconic English soccer club that may be up for sale.

It was unclear if Musk was…

Elon Musk is either getting into international soccer or else may have scored an own goal and teed up more trouble from the SEC.

In a tweet late Tuesday, the Tesla Inc.

TSLA

chief executive said: “Also, I’m buying Manchester United ur welcome,” referring to the iconic English soccer club that may be up for sale.

It was unclear if Musk was serious, as he’s well-known for tweeting jokes and frivolous statements.

Neither Manchester United nor the SEC immediately replied to requests for further information.

But if it was a joke, it may not be funny to the Securities and Exchange Commission, since Manchester United

MANU

is a publicly traded company. Musk’s tweet came at 8:01 p.m., just after the end of after-hours trading, so Man U’s stock was unaffected.

Musk is no stranger to tweets coming back to bite him. His 2018 tweet that he had “funding secured” to consider taking Tesla private at $420 a share became the subject of regulatory action by the SEC, ultimately resulting in $20 million fines each against Musk and Tesla.

Musk has sparred with the SEC on a number of other occasions over the years. He’s also embroiled in a bitter legal battle as he’s trying to pull out of a $44 billion deal to buy Twitter Inc.

TWTR

.

On the other hand, if the tweet is true, it would be a seismic deal for one of the most valuable sports brands on the planet. Manchester United’s current owners, the Glazer family, have been under pressure to sell the team after years of underperformance, mismanagement and a revolt by some fans. The team is currently in last place in the English Premier League, after their second straight loss to start the season, an embarrassing 4-0 defeat to Brentford on Saturday.

Last week, reports said British businessman Michael Knighton planned a formal bid to buy the team. The club has an estimated value of $4.6 billion, according to Forbes.

That price tag would be doable for Musk, who is the world’s wealthiest individual, with a fortune estimated around $267 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Manchester United went public in a 2012 IPO on the New York Stock Exchange. Its shares are down 10% year to date, in line with the S&P 500’s


SPX

10% loss this year.



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Business

Tesla, Ford attract new investments from George Soros’s fund

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Billionaire investor George Soros’s investment fund has bought stakes in Tesla Inc. and Ford Motor Co. and added to existing stakes in EV makers Lucid Group Inc. and Nio Inc., according to a filing late Friday.

The fund acquired 29.5 million shares of Ford
F,
+2.21%
in the reporting period ended in June, the filing showed. It snapped up nearly 30,000 Tesla shares
TSLA,
+4.68%
in a new position as well.

New positions for the fund also included bets on Twitter Inc.
TWTR,
+0.73%,
the social-media company in the middle of a dispute with Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk over their soured deal.

The Soros fund offloaded some of its holdings in Rivian Automotive Inc.
RIVN,
-0.13%,
however, ending the reporting period with slightly less than 18 million shares, down from a previous holding of around 20 million shares.

See also: Rivian loses nearly $2 billion in second quarter as expenses mount

New stakes for the fund also included Las Vegas Sands Corp.
LVS,
+2.60%
and Uber Technologies Inc.
UBER,
+0.71%.

The fund sold all of its shares of Bank of America Corp.
BAC,
+1.09%
and Citigroup Inc.
C,
+0.70%
as well as gaming company Take Two Interactive Inc.
TTWO,
+2.05%,
among others.

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