Toronto, Ontario — June 5, 2018 — Tesla’s annual share holders meeting, held today, will give investors the opportunity to voice their concerns about the company’s direction after a few months of missed production targets and withering press coverage.
While it seems unlikely that shareholders will take the opportunity to boot Elon Musk, the visionary founder and CEO of the company, it is expected that he will face questions about some of the company’s recent missteps – and his own behaviour.
Hot on the heels of the news of a fatal California crash of a Tesla on semi-autonomous mode in late March, April reports revealed that Musk’s auto company would need to hire flesh-and-blood workers at it largely autonomous factory. They also revealed that, despite the additional workers, Tesla would likely fail to meet demand for the Tesla 3 sedan, resulting in one-in-four early down payments on the vehicles being returned would-be customers.
In May, as tabloids mocked the 46-year-old billionaire for dating Grimes, a 30-year-old Canadian musician, Tesla’s factory’s safety record would also come under the microscope. In a long feature from Reveal.com, the website alleged that Tesla’s plant was more dangerous than industry-standard, and suggested the company was misrepresenting workplace safety reports.
The coverage has, apparently, irked Musk. As a widely mocked tweet from May 24 makes clear, his relationship with the press has become rocky of late.
“I’ve just had it with sanctimonious journalists who appoint themselves protectors of the public interest & yet believe that same public is too stupid & immoral to assess their credibility. It’s amazing that you don’t understand how insufferably hypocritical that is. Wow.”
