Zoomi Life

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, has once again proven himself to be a master of public relations. While the attack on the New York Times reporter was somewhat justified, it wasn’t exactly pulled off with tact.

It all started when NYT columnist Randall Stross called the Tesla Roadster a rich man’s car that the government shouldn’t fund with any loans.  He failed Journalism 101 on two counts: the Roadster is not up for any government loans, but the Model S (a family sedan) is; he was too busy inserting his agenda to do diligent research.

Unhappy with the rewriting done to the Times website, Elon Musk appeared on Yahoo’s TechTicker, where he pulled off every Public Relations marketing guru’s worst nightmare: he called the reporter, Stross, a “huge douchebag” and “an idiot.”

He then went on to rightly point out the tens of billions being wasted on Detroit when the small companies pushing new, green technology are being ignored by the government. Musk also pointed out the obvious: the loans the DoE might give Tesla have to be repaid before Tesla is in the black and its investors get any kind of reward for their investments.

At any rate, I’m no personal fan of Musk. I do, however, respect his entrepreneurial instincts and heavily use PayPal, rooted for his space adventure, and am glad to see Tesla Motors appearing to get somewhere under his leadership. Obviously, however, Musk is no Superman and his PR skills probably need a little coaching.

Source: 1, 2