Why Do Some People HATE Tesla and Elon Musk?

Tom Gardner: Hi, Tom Gardner from The Motley Fool with Morgan Housel, long time contributor to The Motley Fool, and we're asking the question, why do some people hate Tesla so much? Why do they hate Tesla so much? I mean, it's been a 15 bagger since coming public as a stock. It's got a product, a number of products, Tesla automobiles that buyers love. They love their cars. It's got a very innovative, disruptive leader at the helm. It's a dramatic game changing business, but some people really hate Tesla. What's one or two reasons why Morgan? And then I'll give one or two reasons. Morgan Housel: I think there's one big reason, and I think it's almost hypocritical, which is that a lot of the traits that have made Elon Musk and Tesla so successful, are the flip side traits of the things that people hate when he does. I mean, this is a guy who took on general motors and Ford when he was in his thirties, and wants to colonize Mars, and propose dropping nuclear bombs on Mars to regulate its climate. Morgan Housel: This is not the kind of guy who's going to show up to a corporate board meeting, and speak and perfectly clipped Harvard Business School progress. The reason people love him is because he's swings for the fences, and he thinks the rules don't apply to him, and he's willing to do things that no one else will. That's why people love him. Tom Gardner: Can you give an example- Morgan Housel: But there's a flip side of that, which is that of course he's also going to do things that you don't love. It's hypocritical to say, "I want someone to do all the crazy things, [crosstalk 00:01:17] but not any other bad crazy things." I think those things come in the same package, and there's a long history of that with Steve Jobs, Bill Gates are the similar thing, what made them great also had these downsides that people didn't like, but you can't have one without the other. Tom Gardner: I think that Elon Musk and Tesla they've gone up against multiple industries that add up to trillions of dollars of market capitalization, oil and gas, utilities, automobiles, energy. I mean they're disrupting multiple industries at once, and those industries, they know how to buy PR agencies to put articles out and challenge a single business. And of course there are shorts too, and shorts... I've shorted stocks, I'm not an opponent of shorting, but in general, those who short stocks particularly professionally with funds. Tom Gardner: Generally have a shorter term perspective. And so, if they can get news out there to move a stock down, we can question whether that's legal, whether that's manipulation or not, but there's a reason to try, and shake a stock, and make it volatile in the short term and that benefit shorts, no question. I think that when you get somebody who's as disruptive as Elon Musk, you've talked about his personality, I'll just add his vision, and how it plays out in front of us. Tom Gardner: When the iPad was released, people were shocked. What is this? Why would I ever use this? Ridiculous, apples over promoting this, this is absurd. Even the iPhone when it came out and didn't have buttons to type on the... You had on the Blackberry- Morgan Housel: It was $1000. Tom Gardner: And it was hundreds and hundreds of dollars. It was like, "This is absurd, that the jobs is losted." People said buffet had lost it when the tech stocks were going insane in the late 1990s, and so I think when Cybertruck lands, it reinforces a lot of the concerns that people have about whether this company is stable, and so on. Day one. What was your reaction when you saw the Cybertruck for the first time? Morgan Housel: That was a joke. Tom Gardner: Yeah, what's your- Morgan Housel: Was always a lot of people did. Tom Gardner: What is your thought about it now? Morgan Housel: I know it's grown on a lot of people. It hasn't grown on me yet, but I've heard so many people say, "At first I hated it, and after a week I kind of like it." It's still not for me. Tom Gardner: I don't think that I'm the target market for living in Alexandria in Virginia, our producer Rick Engdahl did just say, "Hey, maybe the next Motley Fool mobile, which is something that we always have at The Motley Fool, should be a Cybertruck. I think the thing that could persuade you are the specs, the specifications on the car, on the Cybertrack. It's an unbelievable creation. It causes me to forget the acronym F-150 right away, and it's center stage now, in a very profitable area of the automobile industry. I think it'll do more than five billion in sales at the Cybertruck. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Subscribe to The Motley Fool's YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/TheMotleyFool Join our Facebook community: https://www.facebook.com/themotleyfool Follow The Motley Fool on Twitter: https://twitter.com/themotleyfool