There is no longer any doubt about Tesla’s success. As is well known, the US electric car manufacturer is worth more on the stock exchange than the relevant competition put together. The narrative of the successful tech company, which has the most visionary boss ever in Elon Musk (50), apparently also spread an army of fanbots on Twitter. As the US researcher David A. Kirsch analyzed for the first time, automated Twitter accounts have been trumpeting the core messages about Tesla to the world for many years. The professor has analyzed more than four million Tesla tweets from the decade since the IPO in 2010 – and can now describe patterns. His conclusion: The bots were programmed to strengthen the Tesla story and the stock price. We spoke to Kirsch and were able to read his study in advance. Tesla, Musk and the Bot Army.
Things are currently, well, turbulent for Boeing boss David Calhoun (65). The aircraft manufacturer is struggling with quality problems, US trade unionists are shooting at management and a clear future course is simply not in sight. In the industry – most recently Ryanair boss and top customer Michael O’Leary (61) – is already sneering and blaspheming. Boeing’s odyssey.
It can obviously be more fun to build trucks at the moment. In any case, Daimler truck boss Martin Daum (62) was able to shine with good first quarterly figures for 2022 and directly raised the forecast for the year as a whole. Which factors are primarily responsible for the upswing.
S&P Dow Jones kicks the electric car maker Tesla from its most important sustainability index, the S&P 500 ESG Index. Among other things, the responsible manager Margaret Dorn justified the handling of the autopilot accidents and allegations of racism in a blog post
. Elon Musk’s reaction via Twitter: “ESG is a scam.” After all, the oil giant Exxon is still in the top ten.
Speaking of ESG: A broad alliance of 28 corporations such as SAP or Unilever is calling on the EU Commission to regulate by law that from 2035 only zero-emission cars may be sold. have signed the open letter
The car manufacturers Ford and Volvo also called for a ban on combustion engines, garnished with demands for a better charging infrastructure.
Breathe easy in China. The government of the communist state apparently wants to extend subsidies for electric cars. Since its introduction in 2009, the equivalent of almost 14 billion euros has flowed into the market in order to strengthen domestic providers such as Nio, BYD or XPeng. But Western companies also benefited. Now the program is to be extended at least until 2023, report the colleagues from Reuters.
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Number of the week: 0
That’s how many cars were sold in April in the Chinese metropolis of Shanghai: not a single one – and therefore exactly 26,311 fewer in April 2021 because of the lockdown. Things didn’t go quite smoothly in Europe either: the market collapsed here compared to the previous year by 20.6 percent.
ghost driver of the week
Cars are notoriously scarce, even if they don’t come from Shanghai. Order freezes or delivery times of more than a year have long been part of everyday business life. You can brag about it when you can deliver new cars faster. That’s what Hyundai thought. Their Germany branch sent us a press release this week that even a few electric cars are currently available from their dealers. And: If you now configure an electric car individually, you only have to wait (maybe) only six months. Welcome to the car marketing world of 2022!
I wish you an eventful week!
Sincerely yours, Christoph Seyerlein