Elon Musk is frustrated by media coverage of Tesla Battery Day: ‘It’s sad’

Elon Musk is frustrated by media coverage of Tesla Battery Day, calling it “sad” and expressing his belief that there’s a a lack of appreciation for manufacturing.

In an interview that appears to have been edited on Kara Swisher’s podcast, Tesla CEO Elon Musk complained about the media coverage of last week’s event:

The press coverage of this event was sad. Most of the press coverage was a sad reflection of their understanding, really.

However, Musk claims that he also didn’t try to “convince people that much”:

I wasn’t trying to convince people that much — the results will speak for themselves.

Musk then went on a rant about how people don’t appreciate manufacturing enough:

This is something that the average person has no idea about whatsoever. Smart people on Wall Street generally have not the faintest clue about manufacturing and how difficult it is. They think that once you have come up with a prototype, that’s the hard part and everything else is trivial copying after that. It’s not. It’s perhaps 1% of the problem. Large-scale manufacturing, especially of a new technology, it’s something between 1,000 and 10,000% harder than the prototype.

Over the last few years, Musk has developed an admiration for good manufacturing and he has been trying to communicate it frequently. He has said on several occasions that he wants Tesla to become a manufacturing company at its core, and he has encouraged smart people to go into manufacturing.

Electrek’s Take

I am not sure what he was expecting. I really liked and appreciated the event, much like I appreciated the Autonomy Day event, but those events are clearly meant for Tesla investors and enthusiasts.

Those Tesla events go deep into the weeds.

I was extremely positive about the event, but I am an EV nerd:

90% of the event wasn’t about things that people needed to to know at the consumer level, which is what the mainstream media would be looking for.

I wouldn’t even have expected much mainstream coverage for this event, but this is the kind of thing that industry publications love.

To be honest, I’m not sure what he is complaining about. Almost 3 million people watched the presentation on YouTube.

That’s 3 million people watching a presentation about how Tesla is making batteries. That’s incredible.

It’s not a new car or product unveiling. It’s just about one component inside a product (sure, an important component) but it’s still a component for the average consumer.

Who cares what the media or Wall Street are saying? You managed to pique the interest of 3 million people with battery manufacturing. That’s a giant win in my book.