Tesla shares crashed 8% on Friday as two of its senior executives quit, just hours after the electric carmaker’s chief executive Elon Musk sparked concern by smoking marijuana on a live web show.
The company’s head of accounting, Dave Morton, and head of human resources, Gaby Toledano, said they were leaving the company, which has been placed at the centre of a string of controversies by its maverick CEO.
Morton, who joined the company just one month ago, said he was leaving because “the level of public attention placed on the company, as well as the pace within the company, have exceeded my expectations”.
“This caused me to reconsider my future. I want to be clear that I believe strongly in Tesla, its mission and its future prospects, and I have no disagreements with Tesla’s leadership or its financial reporting.”
Morton joined the company one day before Musk tweeted that he was considering taking the company private with “funding secured”. The plan was abandoned 17 days later, but not after drawing a subpoena from the Securities and Exchange Commission and a series of lawsuits alleging market manipulation.
Toledano, who has been on leave of absence from the company, told Bloomberg she would not be returning to the firm.
The pair quit a day after Musk provoked fresh concern after smoking marijuana on a live web show with US comedian Joe Rogan.
Musk, 47, spent two-and-half hours on the streamed podcast late on Thursday discussing everything from artificial intelligence and its impact on humankind to flame throwers and social media.
Taking a puff from a joint – which Rogan said was a blend of tobacco and marijuana and is legal in California – Musk said he “almost never” smoked. “I’m not a regular smoker of weed,” Musk said. “I don’t actually notice any effect … I don’t find that it is very good for productivity.”
Musk stunned investors last month with tweets saying he had funding to take the company private for $420 (£323) a share. He then backed off from his plan saying Tesla was better off as a public company.
Asked about the wisdom of smoking marijuana while he is under investigation by the SEC for the “take private” tweet, Musk told the Guardian by email: “Guardian is the most insufferable newspaper on planet Earth”.
In a subsequent email in response to a question about whether Tesla drug-tests employees, Musk said: “Our policy allows trace amounts of THC [an ingredient of cannabis] during work times, provided they are below the safety limit (much like a minimum alcohol level).”
Musk did not immediately respond to additional questions about his behaviour or comments on the podcast.
Earlier this week Musk escalated his baseless attacks against the British diver Vernon Unsworth, claiming that the man who helped rescue children from a cave in Thailand was a “child rapist” in an email to a reporter. Neither Tesla nor Musk have commented on the Buzzfeed report.
Musk first called the diver Unsworth a “pedo” in a July tweet – an unfounded claim against a man who was part of the international team that freed 12 young footballers and their coach from the Tham Luang cave complex. Musk, who had unsuccessfully attempted to assist the rescue mission, eventually apologised to Unsworth.
Musk’s behaviour has raised concerns about his leadership and several Wall Street analysts have called for the company to appoint a strong deputy to prop up Tesla’s operations and standing with investors.
“We have been calling for a Co-CEO or COO to assist to codifying the leadership structure and in so doing, the culture at Tesla,” said James Albertine, an analyst at brokerage Consumer Edge. “We think this is further evidence that the time is now for management and the board to address these issues.”
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Many senior executives have quit Tesla recently. In the first three months of the year, the company lost Morton’s predecessor, Eric Branderiz and Susan Repo, who was treasurer and vice president of finance. Chief financial officer Deepak Ahuja retired in 2015, but returned in 2017 after his successor, Jason Wheeler, quit after 15 months.
Many of Musk’s Twitter followers questioned if smoking marijuana was against the company’s policy, while others mocked the CEO’s initial $420 bid, a number that has become code for marijuana.
“Elon getting high on weed and whiskey is the first reason to go long on $TSLA in a while. He needs to relax a bit,” one Twitter user said.
“I have a design for a plane,” said Elon Musk in a wide-ranging interview for the Joe Rogan Experience podcast broadcast live Thursday night on YouTube. The interview included the two men drinking whiskey and smoking weed.
Musk thinks his electric airplane would be better than current planes, capable of vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) and supersonic flight at high altitudes. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO admitted, however, that it’s not a priority for him. “Electric cars are important, solar energy is important, stationary storage of energy is important,” said Musk. “These things are much more important than creating electric supersonic VTOL.” Musk then became visibly emotional in describing our addiction to fossil fuels, calling it the “the dumbest experiment in human history.”
The spliff was introduced by Rogan long after the discussion of the plane. “It’s legal, right?” asked Musk before taking a single, tentative puff. The interview was conducted in the state of California where marijuana is legal for recreational use.
The airplane discussion begins at 1:15:08, the urging to accelerate the switch to sustainable energy begins at 1:19:16 and the weed smoking at 2:10:00.
”I’ve thought about this quite a lot, quite a lot,” Musk said of the electric jet design, although he admits that he’s only discussed it with friends and girlfriends. “The trick,” said Musk, “is that you have to transition to level flight. The thing you’d use for vertical takeoff and landing is not suitable for high speed flight.” Musk then describes in broad terms how he’d power the plane.
”The interesting thing about an electric plane is that you want to go as high as possible, but you need a certain energy density in the battery pack, because you have to overcome gravitational potential energy. Once you’ve overcome gravitational potential energy and you’re at a high altitude, the energy you use in cruise is very low, and then you can recapture a large part of your gravitational potential energy on the way down. So you really don’t need any kind of reserve fuel.”
Musk quickly conceded, however, that he has more important things on his plate that prevent him from taking his electric plane design further. “The electric airplane isn’t necessary right now,” said Musk. “Electric cars are important, solar energy is important, stationary storage of energy is important. These things are much more important than creating electric supersonic VTOL.”
Musk then sighed heavily, and became visibly emotional as he described the need to adopt sustainable energies more quickly.
”We’re really playing a crazy game here with the atmosphere and the oceans. We’re taking vast amounts of carbon from deep underground and putting this, putting this in the atmosphere, this is crazy. We should not do this. It’s very dangerous. We should accelerate the transition to sustainable energy. I mean the bizarre thing is that obviously we’re going to run out of oil in the long term. There’s only so much oil we can mine and burn. That’s totally logical, we must have a sustainable energy transport and energy infrastructure in the long term. So we know that’s the end point, we know that. So why run this crazy experiment where we take trillions of tons of carbon from underground and put it in the atmosphere and oceans. This is an insane experiment. It’s the dumbest experiment in human history. Why are we doing this, it’s crazy.”
“So we’re fucked?” asked Rogan later. “No we’re not fucked,” responded Musk. “But the momentum to sustainable energy is too slow.”
In 2017, Musk shared a vision of city-to-city travel using SpaceX rockets. The futuristic concept would allow passengers to make “most long-distance trips” in just 30 minutes, and go “anywhere on Earth in under an hour.”
Elon Musk wants to send you anywhere on Earth in under an hour Elon Musk wants to blast you from New York to London in 29 minutes. Posted by Verge Science on Friday, September 29, 2017
Elon Musk has a storied history of floating ideas like Hyperloops and tunnels long before they become official projects under his command. Of course, Musk also says plenty of things that never happen, and is currently facing an SEC investigation into whether he misled investors about taking Tesla private.
There was whiskey, a joint, a Samurai sword and long conversations about artificial intelligence and the end of the universe.
Just another installment in the extraordinary saga of Elon Musk, the billionaire leader of two major companies that are trying to change the world.
The CEO of electric-car maker Tesla (TSLA) and rocket startup SpaceX spent more than two-and-a-half hours Thursday night talking to podcast host Joe Rogan about what it's like inside his head ("a never-ending explosion"), keeping a car company in business ("very difficult") and trying to get governments to regulate artificial intelligence ("nobody listened").
Musk has come under heavy pressure in recent weeks over his botched attempt to take Tesla private and his erratic behavior. But in the interview with Rogan, which was streamed on YouTube, he appeared at ease.
The South African-born entrepreneur wielded a flamethrower, unsheathed a Samurai sword and held forth on a wide range of subjects:
Being Elon: 'I don't think people would like it that much'
Musk touched on the difficulties of having the kind of brain that has enabled him to build and run multiple high-tech companies at the same time.
"I don't think you'd necessarily want to be me," he said. "I don't think people would like it that much."
The inside of his head is like "a never-ending explosion" with ideas bouncing around all the time, he said, adding that he finds it "very hard" to turn his brain off.
Running Tesla is his "hardest" job, he told Rogan.
The car company has struggled to scale up production of its Model 3 sedan, which has been hit by a number of delays, intensifying the pressure on Musk.
"It's very difficult to keep a car company alive," he said.
Smoking weed: 'It's like a cup of coffee in reverse'
Musk raised eyebrows on social media after accepting what Rogan said was a joint of marijuana and tobacco and taking a puff. "I mean, it's legal, right?" he asked.
Marijuana is legal in California, where the interview took place, but Musk's phone later started buzzing. "I'm getting text messages from friends saying, 'What the hell are you doing smoking weed?'" he said.
Musk explained that he's "not a regular smoker of weed" because he "doesn't find it's very good for productivity."
"It's like a cup of coffee in reverse," he added.
Musk already alarmed some Tesla investors by admitting in an emotional interview last month with The New York Times that he takes the prescription drug Ambien because he has difficulty sleeping.
He has denied he was smoking weed when he sent his now infamous tweet on August 7 claiming he had secured funding to take Tesla private.
Transportation: Flying cars won't 'make your neighbors happy'
The interview touched on one of Musk's favorite themes: ways to revolutionize transportation.
Musk said he had come up with preliminary designs for a supersonic, electric plane that would take off and land vertically.
But he doesn't plan to pursue the idea anytime soon, as he is too occupied with Tesla, SpaceX and other projects.
"I have a lot on my plate," Musk said. "An electric plane isn't important right now."
He insisted that his plans to dig tunnels under cities to whisk commuters around in high speed pods are the best solution to traffic jams. But he expressed frustration about his efforts to build a tunnel under Los Angeles.
"Maybe it will be successful, maybe it won't," Musk said. The city "is a terrible place to dig tunnels," he added. "Mostly because of paperwork."
The tech entrepreneur ruled out the prospect of flying cars, saying they would be too noisy and impractical.
"If you get one of those toy drones and imagine it's 1,000 times heavier — that's not going to make your neighbors happy," he explained.
"If you want a flying car, just put wheels on a helicopter," he added.
Artificial intelligence: 'If you can't beat it, join it'
Musk said his efforts to merge the human brain with machines are making progress.
His venture Neuralink will have "something interesting" to announce in a few months that will be "an order of magnitude" ahead of what people currently think is possible, he said.
Neuralink aims to link humans to computers without a physical connection by implanting tiny electrodes into the brain.
Musk has repeatedly expressed concerns about the dangers of unrestrained development of artificial intelligence but says his push for a more cautious, regulated approach has been "futile."
He told Rogan he thinks that merging humans with computers is the approach that "seems probably the best for us: if you can't beat it, join it."
