On Tuesday, Elon Musk spoke about a range of issues at the Qatar Economic Forum in Doha in an around 20-minute interview with Bloomberg. First, regarding the economy, which he said earlier this month that he had a “super bad feeling” about, he warned that a recession in the US was inevitable at some point and that it would be more likely than not in the near term.
When speaking about the increasingly saturated EV market, Musk said that the current limitations to Tesla’s growth were more related to the supply chain headaches plaguing businesses worldwide than to competition in the industry. He also confirmed that Tesla would be cutting about 10% of its salaried workforce over the next several months. “A year from now, I think our headcount will be higher,” he added.
Meanwhile, when it came to Twitter, Musk mentioned that from the financing to the shareholders’ consensus, there are still “unresolved matters” in the US$44 billion deal. Musk has also reportedly supported the idea of integrating payments in Twitter should the deal go through – both for fiat and cryptocurrency. But, he also suggested that if he does acquire Twitter, that doesn’t necessarily mean he will serve as the company’s CEO. “Whether I am CEO is much less important than my ability to drive the product in the right direction,” he said.
On crypto, specifically, Musk said that people “who are not that wealthy” have encouraged him to support Dogecoin, so he will.
Key comments:
“A recession is inevitable at some point. As to whether there is a recession in the near term, that is more likely than not. It is not a certainty, but it appears more likely than not,” said Musk.
“A lot of people who are not that wealthy have encouraged me to buy and support Dogecoin,” Musk said. “I’m responding to those people.”
“As anyone knows who has tried to order a Tesla, the demand for our cars is extremely high and the wait list is long,” Musk said. “This is not intentional, and we’re increasing production capacity as fast as humanly possible.”
