Does the American electric vehicle company, Tesla Inc., have the potential to be a $1 trillion company? It’s an opinion that got Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeting early Friday, only for the billionaire to do something fairly unusual for him: delete a tweet.
The exchange started via a tweet by an account that regularly uploads promotional posts about Tesla and “Full Self-Driving,” popularly known as FSD, a package that is sold by the company along with its driver-assistance system Autopilot. FSD is controversial because of Tesla’s mixed messaging — even though it is supposed to be autopilot, the company tells drivers who use it that they need to be fully attentive.
“FSD is the biggest thing ever,” the user @WholeMarsBlog wrote. “Tesla is going to be bigger than Apple.”
Musk replied that he thinks there is “a >0% chance Tesla could be the biggest company.” After another user wrote that they loved “the direction of that arrow,” Musk responded: “Probably within a few months.”
Musk then quickly deleted the latter post leaving people wondering if he thought better of sending it or was he asked to take the tweet down.
According to Bloomberg, in late morning trading on Friday, Tesla shares declined as much as 4.6% and as of 12:55 p.m. in New York, the stock was down 3.7%.
In 2018, as part of a settlement reached with the U.S. SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) related to Musk’s tweets about taking the company private, “Tesla agreed to employ a securities lawyer to review executives’ social media posts and make sure they’re consistent with disclosure policies and procedures.” Tesla also specifically agreed to oversee communications by Musk and to pre-approve anything containing information material to the shareholders or company.
Hours before Friday’s exchange that led to Musk deleting a tweet, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that the American EV maker repeatedly violated U.S. labor law and needed to make Musk delete a tweet in which he talked about punishing workers if they unionized. That post has not yet taken down by him.
Tesla has a long way to go to pass Apple Inc. as the world’s biggest company, with a roughly $600 billion market capitalization compared to the iPhone maker’s market value at about $2 trillion.
