Reuters: In November 2017, Jim Chanos Said Elon Musk Would Leave Tesla By 2020 — That’s Within 1 Day

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It was just brought to my attention that Jim Chanos, one of Tesla’s fiercest short sellers, who believed/believes Tesla is a fraud, predicted in 2017 that Elon Musk would step down from his position as CEO of Tesla by 2020. He, like many short sellers, also predicted Tesla would go bankrupt, but he did not give a timeframe on that matter. As you can see, this information comes from a Reuters Global Markets Forum tweet from a little more than two years ago. It seems to be the only source of this information.

With one day to go till 2020, it doesn’t look like Elon Musk is leaving his position as the CEO of Tesla in time for the prediction to be correct, unless he does it right on New Year’s Eve. Also, yeah, it’s not happening.

Instead, Tesla vehicles are selling as fast as ever, the company showed a profit in the 3rd quarter of this year as well as the 3rd and 4th quarter of last year, and the first Model 3s produced in China just started getting delivered to customers there. I seriously doubt Tesla will go bankrupt.

Once Tesla has been profitable for 5 years (or even 10), Elon may retire, and it’s hard to imagine the company going bankrupt under Elon’s leadership. With Elon leading the company, Tesla has seen insane growth, has developed cutting-edge technology, and has been like the proverbial rocket launching into space. If he ever did step down as CEO of Tesla, it would be at the point where Elon’s satisfied with where Tesla is going regardless of his leadership and fully believes it will do well with him gone.

The Y2K bug has a better chance of happening tomorrow night than Elon quitting Tesla.

In my opinion, Q4 2019 is going to look really amazing for Tesla and makes Tesla shorts and bears look like stubborn fools who refuse to see Tesla for what it really is: a tech company that is changing the way we drive and use electricity. No other automaker can claim this. I think this is why short sellers have been losing billions. They are betting on horses but placing the bets on these horses at a Baccarat table. They are blindly just throwing money at the idea that Tesla is a fraud because it makes cars that, to them, don’t make sense.

Photos by Kyle Field & Chanan Bos, CleanTechnica


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Johnna Crider

Johnna owns less than one share of $TSLA currently and supports Tesla's mission. She also gardens, collects interesting minerals and can be found on TikTok

Johnna Crider has 1996 posts and counting. See all posts by Johnna Crider