One of Tesla’s earliest investors, Ross Gerber, discussed the company’s current status and said he believes Elon Musk should step down from the position of a CEO.
Speaking to Sky’s Business Live, Gerber said the tech-mogul has lost his focus ever since becoming part of Donald Trump’s administration.
“I think Tesla needs a new CEO and I decided today I was going to start saying it and so this is the first show that I’m saying it on.
“It’s time for somebody to run Tesla. The business has been neglected for too long. There are too many important things Tesla is doing, so either Elon should come back to Tesla and be the CEO of Tesla and give up his other jobs or he should focus on the government and keep doing what he is doing but find a suitable CEO of Tesla.”
Since December, the company’s market value has plunged by more than $800bn.
Gerber added that Musk has been splitting his time between working with Trump and writing social media posts of X, which has led to negative publicity.
“The company’s reputation has just been destroyed by Elon Musk,” he said.
“Sales are plummeting so, yeah, it’s a crisis. You literally can’t sell the best product in the market place because the CEO is so divisive.”
UnilandTech reports that $1.4 billion have gone missing from Tesla’s financial records, citing a report by Financial Times.
Allegedly, the company spent $6.3 billion on ‘purchases of property and equipment excluding finance leases, net of sales’ in the second half of 2024. However, the company’s balance sheet shows that the total asset value increased by only $4.9 billion, with experts questioning where the $1.4 million go.
According to Luzi Hail, Wharton School professor of accounting, Tesla could’ve “sold off some [property, plant, and equipment], and we do not know what the net book value (the respective gross amounts) were.”
The difference could also be down to “mergers and acquisitions transactions and foreign currency transactions,” she added.
In the last five years there hasn’t been anything like this in the documents of Tesla.
Meanwhile, Tesla keeps raising debt, betting on future growth, though ongoing controversies could put that to the test. Musk hasn’t helped matters, from demanding job reports from government workers to the chaos surrounding CDC layoffs and unexpected recalls under the Trump administration.
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