The three competitive automakers Ford, Volkswagen and Tesla seem to play cool and recently seen giving credits to each other.
CEO Jim Farley quoted a tweet from Tesla CEO Elon Musk, “Thanks for leading the way” in response to Elon Musk’s tweet posted about a day earlier. Musk tweeted,”cemetery of automotive startups over the past century is very large and will get larger.Tesla and Ford are the only American automakers that haven’t ever gone bankrupt.” CEO Farley thanked Musk as he has lead the charge to sustainable energy with Tesla and made all the other automakers work on promoting electric vehicles.
https://mobile.twitter.com/jimfarley98/status/1453793671577575428
Elon Musk has made several other tweets congratulating Ford for its success and several other. On the other hand, he also teased Farley when he tweeted about their test of hands-free self-driving system in the real world. Musk directly did not responded to his tweet but shared a video clip of the 1995 comedy movie ‘Tommy Boy’ that featured actors Chris Farley and David Spade driving the car which was completely out of control. Alongside the video, he wrote the caption, “I found some footage of the drive”. Also, executives and communications folks from Ford haven’t always been so complimentary. In fact, there have been times when people from Ford have ridiculed Tesla, including Farley himself.
The automaking business is full of competition and sometimes harsh words or actions can be seen. But recently they giving credits and congratulating each other give a hope of nice play.
He already sent that tweet a few times before, and there was really no reason he needed to send it again. The last time Musk mentioned Ford and Tesla back in March 2021, Farley quoted the tweet with a single word: “Respect ….”. In addition to that, Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess has always been the leader who is always ahead in giving credits in success. It’s not like Farley and Diess and giving up in competition but looking forward to lead the world.
