Another day at Tesla: Exec departs, Musk in spotlight
CEO appears to be smoking marijuana during interview
Another executive departure, another controversy over the CEO’s behavior, another stock drop. Another typical day at Tesla. Although the details change, the pattern stays the same. This time, the executive departure is David Morton, chief accounting officer at Tesla Inc., who called it quits after just a month on the job. The controversy is over Elon Musk taking a hit off an apparent marijuana-tobacco joint during a podcast interview that made its rounds on YouTube. And the stock dropped more than 6 percent Friday to close at $263.24 a share — its lowest point since March of last year.
All of it comes as the electric automaker continues to struggle to convert itself from a money-losing boutique to a mass-production profit machine. It’s doing so while under investigation by the government and facing shareholder lawsuits after Musk revealed a plan to take the company private on Twitter, boosting the share price. The estimated $24 billion plan eventually was scrapped and the stock fell.
Tesla only has a few weeks left to deliver on Musk’s promise to post sustained profits starting in the third quarter after losing more than $700 million in the second quarter. Amid the mounting pressure, Musk must now dig himself out of a fresh controversy of his own making. About two hours into the YouTube video of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” the CEO accepts a sip of whiskey and a drag off a joint offered to him by Rogan, a comedian and podcast host who makes it a point to note that pot is legal in California.
Shortly after smoking, Musk — dressed in a T-shirt that says “Occupy Mars” — looks at his phone and laughs, saying he’s getting texts from friends asking why he’s smoking weed during the interview. Later, he says he doesn’t notice any effect from the joint.
“I’m not a regular smoker of weed,” he says. When Rogan asks how often he smokes it, Musk replies: “Almost never.”