00:00 Speaker A
Dan, let me let me ask you a different question. With some of your colleagues on the street, it’s interesting. They’ll say that all this talk of the branding and the politics and the chainsaw and the Maralago, that is not really the issue. You know, I’ve heard some of your colleagues say, the issue is much more fundamental. It is a Model Y switchover. It’s a Model Y changeover. That is what’s meaningfully impacting deliveries. There’s too much, they say, being placed on the whole branding debate. What is your take on that?
00:52 Speaker B
You look, I think it’s I mean, there there’s some truth to both. Look, in terms of the actual numbers, in terms of the sales numbers, yeah, I mean, the brand issues have actually been called 10 to 15% of the actual decline because a lot of that is change over refresh and everything else. But Josh, I think in terms of the stock, 70% of the selloff is brand issue, brand worries in terms of, you know, some of the the sort of crisis that we’re seeing. And the reason is, it’s investors kind of looking forward. In other words, Musk is Tesla, Tesla is Musk. He is the brand. And what he’s created is is a company that’s obviously, you know, globally in my opinion, one of the best brands in the world. It’s making sure that the brand damage doesn’t spiral into something much more negative. And I think that’s that’s how I’d almost characterize those two issues.
03:08 Speaker A
I I mean, I I would have to wonder if it’s already there, Dan. And I also, you know, I’ve been trying to think of other brand situations like this, right? You think about the the Bud Budweiser situation, you think about Target, you think about some of the other recent examples, and it has taken a long time in those cases. And they haven’t in in some cases, they haven’t even fully recovered, right? So, um, how how long, especially since he doesn’t actually seem to be trying to do anything to repair this damage in terms of the brand and the image, I mean, how long could we see this situation play out?
04:32 Speaker B
Look, there’s different ways to view it. I mean, some could argue, and I we got to see how it plays out like do more Republican or Trump supporters ultimately then start to buy Teslas, right? In other words, ones that weren’t buying and now they’re must supporters, and and that actually becomes a positive. Then it comes down to when you look at the brand, I mean, I think Tesla’s brand is it’s almost hard to compare because you’re going to have 10 million Teslas on essentially on the road going into next year. And when it comes to autonomous, the question is, like, when you start to actually have cyber cabs, and we have what I believe, one of every five cars autonomous, do people not take that because it’s it’s Musk, because maybe something happened a few years ago. I’m going I’m fast forwarding to next, you know, one, two, three years. So I’m just saying I get the brand issues. We’ve talked about it, you know, constantly over the last week, but I the reason last night was important because you read the room. It’s the start of what I view as a balancing act, and I think that’s very important.