Tesla CEO Elon Musk's"super bad feeling" about the economy could be the auto industry's"canary in the coal mine" moment, signaling a recession for an industry whose bosses have shown no signs of concern.
"Tesla's not your average canary in the coal mine. It's more like a whale in the lithium mine," Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas said in a research note, referring to the metal used in EV batteries. Now supply-chain snarls, exacerbated by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, have dragged down sales. U.S. new-car sales in May finished at a weak annualized rate of 12.68 million, according to Wards Intelligence. That's a far cry from the glory days of 17 million a year pre-COVID."Risk of recession is high, so what he is saying certainly isn't extreme," Jeff Schuster, president of global forecasting at LMC Automotive, said of Musk.
"We're in a period of discombobulation, and frankly the financial world and the business leadership world don't agree," Sandbulte said."At some point, we'll get the answer who is correct." And industry officials also point out Tesla has its own issues, including possibly hiring too fast compared to its growth.