Clean Green Cars: Elon Musk: "What, Me Worry?"

Elon Musk: "What, Me Worry?"

Tesla Model S - Click above for high-res image gallery

One thing we can now say about Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors, is that he’s not taking the lawsuit from Martin Eberhard as a sign to tone down his language. The man who called the NYT writer a “douchebag” appeared at WIRED’s business conference, Disruptive by Design, in Manhattan yesterday and said the following while declaring that he’d like a chance to run Detroit:

It’s not out of the question to have unions, but if there’s going to be a union, they’d better understand that they’re on the same side as the company. I’m against having a two-class system where you’ve got the workers and then the managers, sort of like nobles and peasants [...] Most of our experienced factory workers come from unionized environments, and we asked them what benefit did they see in unions. They said, ‘Well, if their boss was an asshole, they had recourse.’ “I said, ‘Let’s make a rule: There will be no assholes.’ I fired someone for being an asshole. And I only had to do that once, actually.

Note he didn’t mention Eberhard by name, but who else has Musk fired that the crowd would care about? Musk also called the Prius “not a true hybrid” and said electric cars were “an inevitable thing.”

Oh, and WIRED might be giving Eberhard’s lawsuit more ammunition. One of Eberhard’s charges is that Musk falsely claims that he is the founder or creator of Tesla Motors. WIRED’s headline: “Tesla Motors Founder: Let Me Run Detroit.” Whoops.

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