{"id":265991,"date":"2018-08-20T07:31:16","date_gmt":"2018-08-20T05:31:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=265991"},"modified":"2018-08-20T07:31:16","modified_gmt":"2018-08-20T05:31:16","slug":"musk-defends-relentless-work-hours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/technology\/265991\/musk-defends-relentless-work-hours\/","title":{"rendered":"Musk defends relentless work hours"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tesla Inc chief executive officer Elon Musk, responding to Uber Technologies Inc board member Arianna Huffington urging him to change the way he works, ruled out taking a different approach.<\/p>\n<p>An open letter from Huffington to Musk accused him of \u201cdemonstrating a wildly outdated, anti-scientific and horribly inefficient way of using human energy,\u201d adding in a tweet that the Tesla founder should change the way he works.<\/p>\n<p>It follows an interview with the New York Times last week, in which Musk said he sacrificed family milestones in the race to meet Tesla production targets.<\/p>\n<p>Still, the Tesla CEO responded to the letter with a tweet in which he said that Ford Motor Co. and Tesla are the only two American car companies to avoid bankruptcy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI just got home from the factory,\u201d Musk wrote at 2:32 a.m. Pacific time on Sunday. \u201cYou think this is an option. It is not.\u201d<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Dear Elon, please change the way you work to be more in line with the science around how humans are most effective: You need it, Tesla needs it and the world needs it. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/vy6hdnYKzt\">https:\/\/t.co\/vy6hdnYKzt<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Arianna Huffington (@ariannahuff) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ariannahuff\/status\/1030559018606051328?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">August 17, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Ford &amp; Tesla are the only 2 American car companies to avoid bankruptcy. I just got home from the factory. You think this is an option. It is not.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Elon Musk (@elonmusk) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/elonmusk\/status\/1031111742103814144?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">August 19, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Tesla shares plunged 8.9% on Friday after the interview with the New York Times in which he described the past 12 months as \u201cthe most difficult and painful year of my career.\u201d References to Ambien use and driving while tweeting are fueling calls for Tesla\u2019s board to step up its oversight of the company\u2019s CEO and largest shareholder.<\/p>\n<p>Musk sparked controversy by tweeting on Aug. 7 that he had \u201cfunding secured\u201d to take Tesla private. He later said that meeting with Saudi Arabia\u2019s sovereign wealth fund had given him confidence to announce the news. The company later received a subpoena from the Securities and Exchange Commission over the tweet.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Stock\u2019s Gyrations<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Tesla has marketed its top-of-the-line models that boast head-snapping acceleration as having \u201cInsane\u201d and \u201cLudicrous\u201d modes. But features some consumers may want in an automobile aren\u2019t necessarily sustainable in an automobile executive.<\/p>\n<p>Tesla shares plummeted Friday by the most in two years, closing at $305.50, after the New York Times published an interview in which Musk described the past 12 months as \u201cthe most difficult and painful year of my career.\u201d References to Ambien use and driving while tweeting are fueling calls for Tesla\u2019s board to step up its oversight of the CEO, chairman and largest shareholder.<\/p>\n<p>An open letter from Huffington, a board member at Uber Technologies Inc., to Musk accused him of \u201cdemonstrating a wildly outdated, anti-scientific and horribly inefficient way of using human energy.\u201d She added in a tweet that the Tesla founder should change the way he works. In his interview with the Times, Musk said he sacrificed family milestones in the race to meet Tesla production targets.<\/p>\n<p>Still, the Tesla CEO tweeted that Ford Motor Co. and Tesla are the only two American car companies to have avoided bankruptcy, and dismissed the idea that he was able to cut his workload.<\/p>\n<p>Musk\u2019s already chaotic world blew up again when he tweeted this month that he had \u201cfunding secured\u201d to take Tesla private.<\/p>\n<p>He later said that meetings with Saudi Arabia\u2019s sovereign wealth fund had given him confidence to announce the news. Last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission sent the company a subpoena regarding the statement.<\/p>\n<p>Huffington\u2019s attempted intervention comes at a time when she\u2019s been campaigning in support of the benefits of sleep. Her description accompanying the open letter describes her as a \u201cflat shoe advocate and sleep evangelist.\u201d<br \/>\nLucid Motors<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s unlikely Musk has lost much sleep over concerns about Newark, California-based Lucid Motors, whose predecessor Atieva Inc. was founded in 2007 by Bernard Tse, a former Tesla executive and board member.<\/p>\n<p>While its prototype Lucid Air sedan has been well-received, it\u2019s unclear whether the company has the funding to get production going. Lucid\u2019s website is taking refundable $2,500 deposits for the vehicles it plans to eventually sell.<\/p>\n<p>Lucid first announced in November 2016 that it chose Arizona as the home for a $700 million manufacturing facility. But in April 2017, chief technology officer Peter Rawlinson said the company didn\u2019t have the money in place to start construction and needed to complete a fourth round of fundraising, known as Series D.<\/p>\n<p>In July 2017, Bloomberg News reported that Lucid had hired Morgan Stanley to raise more money and was considering an outright sale after exploring early-stage takeover talks with Ford Motor Co. Ford ultimately moved on.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/motoring\/264345\/musk-tweet-draws-tesla-investor-lawsuits-over-share-price-jump\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Musk tweet draws Tesla investor lawsuits over share price jump<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tesla Inc chief executive officer Elon Musk, responding to Uber Technologies Inc. board member Arianna Huffington urging him to change the way he works, ruled out taking a different approach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":251491,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9878],"tags":[26,6118],"class_list":["post-265991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-headline","tag-tesla"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265991"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":266007,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265991\/revisions\/266007"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}