Business | Schumpeter

Tesla faces an identity crisis: carmaker or tech firm?

Elon Musk’s fiendish conundrum

illustration depicting a massive bear standing on top of a Tesla Cybertruck, with the vehicle's driver hanging out of the car window and appearing to shout at the bear.
Illustration: Brett Ryder

On the night before Elon Musk unveiled Tesla’s first-quarter results on April 23rd, your columnist brought his car to a halt, noticing a futuristic vehicle hooked up to a Tesla charging station in Los Angeles. It was a dark-purple Cybertruck. Twinkling lights glittered behind the tinted windows. It looked so wedgelike, angular and otherworldly that it could have moonlighted as an armoured personnel carrier in “Civil War”, a new apocalyptic film.

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This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Elon Musk’s conundrum”

From the April 27th 2024 edition

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