Before the much awaited Tesla Investor Day on March the 1, 2023, in Austin, Texas, there was much speculation about the revelations that would come from Tesla and Elon Musk. On all previous such occasions, like Battery Day and AI Days, we were served with a clear state of development and path to the future. That those paths were always too optimistic is something we all were expecting.
The hype was this time even bigger than before. There was a new secret master plan to be announced. The third in the history of Tesla. We should have known better — it was an investor day event during market hours. That means no new information that could influence the share price was allowed.
As I wrote in my previous report about the day, the goal of the secret master plan was way outside the scope of Tesla. It was more ambitious than the Paris Agreement that is too hard for most nations to follow. It was just a free talking point about the context in which Tesla hoped to operate. Contributing to those lofty, and very much needed, goals is something many companies have promised to do. We knew Tesla was one of those companies, so it might have been news to some investors, but not for any Tesla watcher.
And if it was news to an investor, it was an investor who had not done his/her homework. (You should not invest in a company if you do not know something so essential as the goals of the organization.)
And here we reach the core problem with this Tesla Investor Day. It was aimed at not very informed investors — people who did not know much about the company, its products, the way it operates, its culture, and its goals.
We did hear a lot about Tesla history, the current state of affairs at Tesla, some vague future expected developments. But nothing concrete about the future. The only real news was the location of the next gigafactory in Monterrey, Mexico. That news was shared with the world by president Obrador of Mexico the day before. It was also long expected and rumored.
What the Tesla Investor Day 2023 really was, was a huge marketing failure. It promised an important revelation, the third master plan. And delivered nothing.
Elon Musk is one of the best engineers in the world. But marketing is completely beyond him. All his companies have succeeded because of technical brilliance, overcoming the many marketing blunders he threw along the way before his companies.
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