It's not often that a chief executive asks a journalist for grades.
But that's what Tesla's Elon Musk asked Automotive News Publisher Jason Stein in a podcast interview July 26.
The two were reflecting on a previous interview, on stage at the Automotive News World Congress, in January 2015. And Musk wondered aloud if what he said more than five years earlier came to be.
"The things that I said would happen, did they happen?" he asked. "I'm just curious. What's my report card?"
So we went to the tape. Turns out, Musk wasn't exactly full of forecasts on that January day. But here's what he did predict, and what happened.
Tesla will produce 500,000 cars annually in 2020.
Musk would have made it easily were it not for the coronavirus. A new plant in Shanghai was just coming onstream at the start of the year, and output was scheduled to rise in Fremont, Calif.
But a 5.5 percent second-quarter production drop amid the lockdowns in northern California left the midyear tally just shy of 185,000.
Tesla is still holding out hope for hitting the half-million mark on one count. In its latest financial report, Tesla said it has the capacity to deliver 500,000 vehicles this year. "While achieving this goal has become more difficult, delivering half a million vehicles in 2020 remains our target."
"The Model X is really going to be a phenomenal car."
Depends on your definition of phenomenal. The three-row crossover — with its falcon-wing doors, giant windshield, head-snapping acceleration and what Musk once called "the most complex sun visor in history" — has few rivals on the dazzle front. But questions about quality and reliability have surrounded it from the start. That includes some well-publicized issues with those doors, which Musk said in January 2015 that Tesla was working hard to resolve.
The crossover did launch in the summer of 2015, just as he predicted. Last fall, after four full years on the market, the Model X was rated by Consumer Reports as one of the industry's 10 least-reliable vehicles.
"The Gigafactory will drive down battery costs, guaranteed."
A Trefis analysis published on Forbes.com in January estimated that Tesla's battery costs fell from about $230 per kilowatt-hour in 2016 to $127 last year — a 45 percent decline. That dropped the average battery cost per vehicle to $9,000 from $16,000.
On stage that January, as his giant Nevada battery plant was under construction, Musk said that for the Model 3, "the bar that we have to pass … [is] a 30 percent reduction."
"The biggest impact that Tesla will have will be the reach which we induce or cause other car companies to accelerate their plans for electric vehicles."
Musk scored that one himself on the podcast: "I've been surprised by the slow pace of change."
It may be slow in his eyes. But for the industry, it's been a Ludicrous Mode-type of rush to EVs over the past five years — from General Motors to Volkswagen to European luxury brands to countless Chinese startups.
You're not likely to see any CEO give Tesla credit for the push. Tighter regulations, a growing environmental consciousness and fallout from the VW diesel scandal have all been driving forces. But you know those rivals are fully aware of what Musk has achieved — and wish they could whip up just a fraction of his magic with their own EVs.
So there you have it. The CEO who concedes he was the kind of kid who was always late for class does have a knack for scoring pretty well on tests. .
