For years, Elon Musk paid zero dollars for traditional advertising while almost singlehandedly keeping Tesla — and himself — front and center. With a never-ending stream of tweets, television and podcast appearances and livestreamed product events, the electric-vehicle maker and its billionaire CEO dominated news cycles and occasionally went viral.
Musk was a veritable hype machine, and his knack for breaking through meant that when Tesla managed to execute, its valuation soared to a stratosphere no automaker had ever come close to reaching.
Last year, Musk was in the news like never before, albeit for problematic reasons: his offer to buy Twitter, his attempt to back out, and his sowing of chaos once he finally did take over. All the while, for three quarters in a row, Tesla under-delivered on one of the metrics that matters most: the number of electric vehicles it handed over to customers.
What’s worse, the hype machine that kept Tesla humming has been breaking down. During its last earnings call, Musk predicted an “epic” end of year. There was nothing epic about cutting prices and production in China, or offering previously unheard of discounts in the US, only to still fall short of expected deliveries by thousands of vehicles, with production again exceeding sales by a wide margin.
Tesla’s Production Outpaces Deliveries | The company made 34,423 more vehicles than it sold last quarter
Musk could have been clearer back in October about the challenges Tesla was up against. Instead, he flagged a tougher macro environment only after making the “epic” comment. He said he saw a path to the company far exceeding Apple in market value, and perhaps even being worth more than the iPhone maker and Saudi Aramco combined.
Then he left it to CFO Zachary Kirkhorn to effectively lower guidance for the year by flagging that Tesla expected to increase vehicle deliveries by “just under” 50% in 2022. Tesla ended up growing by 40%, even as it pulled out all the stops to juice sales at the end of the year.
