特斯拉发布Roadster演示飞行，马斯克暗示与SpaceX合并可能

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Listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts or watch us live on YouTube. All right. Well, in any case, um, let's talk about cars because Tesla finally rolled out its long delayed Roadster sports car. Actually, that's not exactly accurate. It launched the vehicle into the sky because this is Tesla. This is Elon Musk and he's nothing but a showman. Exactly. David Welch is our Detroit bureau chief. Uh, and he joins us now for more on this.

So, um, obviously when the Roadster actually launches, it's not going to be capable of being launched into the sky. What was the purpose of, I don't know, introducing the car in this way? What what what did Tesla what's the message Tesla wanted to send? David

look Elon Musk is great at feeding a narrative and one of them is could the could SpaceX and Tesla merge up and I think this is sort of a kind of literal version of what one could possibly see if the two companies merged. I don't think they would actually make a flying car. I think if you were to talk to a lot of aerospace uh and and aeronautic engineers, the a car shape would not be uh what you would design for something that's going to fly.

But look, that that was a pretty impressive display of this vehicle landing, taking off and landing with rockets. Uh there there'd be too many safety issues, I think, with a car that one drives that fast and two is going to fly uh and a lot of regulatory stuff around it. So, I wouldn't look at this literally. I think it's more a story of what you could have if uh in terms of technology sharing uh if if Tesla and SpaceX were to merge.

And it's also just to get a lot of hype for this Roadster that's going to go into production in a couple of years. The Roadster was the first vehicle Tesla sold a long time ago and it was basically a Lotus Elise with a Tesla electric drivetrain in there. This is a purpose-built uh pretty cool looking roadster that uh won't even sell in big numbers, but could generate a lot of excitement for the Tesla brand, which has a pretty limited product lineup right now, and sales are are kind of bumping along.

So, the it's generating excitement about Tesla's vehicles, but also, you know, potential for for uh sharing mergers, what you know, that sort of thing within Elon's empire of companies. Hey David, I just got back from some time over in Paris and boy, lot of electric cars over there. A lot of electric ti tax taxis. Got in a couple of the BYD cars for the first time ever. Those were pretty awesome. Um

like lots of screens all over the place, right?

Yeah. I mean, boy, what's the feeling in Detroit these days as to their EV strategy? What's kind of the current thinking in your world? It's pretty tough for the Detroit companies with EVs because look, they are clearly strongest and get most of their profits from the US market. Uh even with a little bit of a bounce of EV sales in the third quarter, still 5 to 6% of the market, you're starting to see some discounting out there uh of the EVs that are for sale in the US.

So the the EVs you're seeing uh being developed are mostly for China, for the European market where regulations and incentives are still keeping sales going. Here it's just the opposite. Trump administration's gotten rid of the requirements that pushed automakers to develop them and the sales incentives that uh helped consumers buy them. So they're kind of in this holding pattern where they know they have to keep developing EV technology for the long-term future. it just doesn't sell in the market where they make the most money.

So, you're looking at at engineering and development that's just not going to generate a return for a while.

And and I think that's pretty frustrating for them because they know they have to spend it, but there's no ROI on it uh in their biggest market.

Yeah. So, they don't like Yeah, I get that. But at the same time, if you live in California and a gallon of gas costs you almost $7, you're looking at EVs with a new eye. So, for any consumer that is intent on buying an EV, what are their options? What's available out there?

There are a lot of EVs out there. General Motors still has a dozen EVs on the market. They have not canceled those. Uh you've got the Tesla models. Hyundai has a couple of them. Of course, most companies actually do have a few models out there.

[snorts]

Um so there is variety in the market in the big segments where most consumers shop which is crossover SUVs uh and and luxury SUVs that are electric. You do have the Tesla models of course and uh but the you know the vehicles that are there just just don't sell all that well. I think how people are reacting to gasoline prices in the US is they're buying hybrids which is why we've seen Toyota and Hyundai sales do so well.

Not even plug-in hybrids, just your basic hybrid that doesn't require any charging. So, if you're on a road trip, you're getting great gas mileage, but you're not really worried about having to stop someplace for half an hour to top up,

right?

That's that's how Americans are looking at this.

Yeah, we got the number four sibling, a hybrid. Awesome. I mean, it's just

the number four sibling is in California where it matters the most.

Yes.

So, what they're getting like 40 m a gallon, 50 m per gallon.

Yeah. I don't know. It's just all I'm not paying for it. So, I'm not paying for the gas. I paid for the lease. But

so you you paid for it in some way.

In some way. It always happens. Uh David, uh Tesla's going to report earnings uh coming up, I guess, the 21st here. Um what do people want to hear from Elon about this this company these days? Do you think

I think you might see some better numbers because they did surprise on the upside with their third quarter vehicle sales and analysts are basically for forecasting uh finally some growth in Tesla's total uh vehicle sales after a couple years of decline. So on the basic operations of the company, uh you'll see that I I think investors though are going to be more interested in the robo taxi business, how that's being rolled out, how that's coming because that that's really Elon's big play here is the cyber cab

and uh you know whether or not that can start to get into uh many cities and compete with Whimo which has been rolling out city by city for over a year now. So, no indication that we're going to get any kind of Tesla SpaceX merger that that you kind of referenced at the top of our our conversation.

I doubt he would announce it there. There's a lot of speculation in analyst reports that we're going to see it sometime soon and that investors are are widely expecting it. Elon's done this before when they had Solar City many years ago and the company was struggling uh to make any money and and to get investor interest. it was basically, you know, folded into Tesla because Tesla at the time had unlimited ability to raise funds and but that hasn't gone anywhere.

Um, you know, Tesla's got a much business with much better staying power than the solar business did. But could it use an injection like being folded into SpaceX? Perhaps yes.

Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.

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I guess we all know that Apple's coming out with a new phone. I guess it's a foldable phone. iPhone Duo, I guess, uh is its brand name. And apparently there's pre-orders are pretty darn strong here. So, let's break it down. see what it means for our good