Elon Musk, electric vehicle maker Tesla's CEO and co-founder, isn't the type of person who is easily dissuaded from charging forward.
So it's no surprise that the economic concerns of many executives and analysts in corporate America aren't shaking him from gearing up from building factories and releasing more products even if the economy goes into a recession in 2023.
“Well, to be frank, we’re very pedal to the metal, come rain or shine,” said Musk during the Austin, Texas-based company's third-quarter earnings call last week. “So, we are not reducing our production in any meaningful way, recession or not recession.”
The company's long-delayed Cybertruck, its first battery-powered, all-electric truck, is out of the engineering phase and ready to start production in Austin by mid-2023 no matter the economic headwinds, said Musk, who added, "We're in the final lap for Cybertruck.”
But Musk admits his aggressive posture can change beyond the realm of manufacturing. When an analyst asked if his multiple companies — plus his proposed multibillion-dollar acquisition of social media platform Twitter — could be combined under one parent organization, similar to Alphabet, the owner of Google, Google Fiber and other subsidiaries, Musk didn't plow ahead on the idea. Streamlining Musk’s many companies, which include Neuralink, SpaceX and the Boring Co., could have real estate implications from office space to manufacturing operations.
Musk, whose drawn-out bid to buy San Francisco-based Twitter faces a Friday deadline to cross the finish line, demurred about charging ahead immediately on combining a portfolio of investments under one umbrella.
"I'm not an investor. I'm an engineer and a manufacturing person and a technologist," said Musk, the world's richest person with a net value of about $200 billion, according to Forbes. "So, I actually work and design and develop products. That's what I do."