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Obviously, investors wanted him to focus more on Tesla. But if he is still associated with Dodge, is the can the brand damage be reversed?

Yeah, it's going to take some more time. I mean, he started off the call talking about how the protests have affected him and the company and how some of these were misguided. Some of them were, you know, sponsored by outside forces. And then, you know, when he got into Dodge, you want to hear they know he said it's critical work and he wants to continue to do this work. But he's going to get back and there was no exact timetable. Yeah, next month and may. Very casual. And one to two days a week. You know, we want to hear a little more competence as shareholders as investors that, no, my my time here is being well served and now I need to focus back on what I'm doing with Tesla. And there was no real enthusiasm. He's not overly enthusiastic all the time, but he sounded tired, he sounded beaten down, and there was nothing timetable wise that was concrete enough to watch the stock trade. I was watching the price after every comment. It peaked at 251. It slowly faded back. The stock is up more after hours because of that Jerome Powell news than what he had to say on this call.

That's a really interesting observation. Gotham, I want to focus in on something that Jay just mentioned. And that is Musk's comments at the top of the call, his allegations that he has presented without proof that he has said before that some of these protests against Tesla around the country are either people who were directly received government largesse were upset that it's now going away or who are directly paid by some dark forces. And you know, I guess this is why most CEOs aren't out there tweeting, especially not, you know, putting up conspiracy theories and whatnot, because it, you know, it's not necessarily good for your business. So I'm curious what you make of I mean, he led with that.

I think we can dismiss the accusations about them being paid for no other reason than the the protest of such a scale that even Elon Musk could not afford to pay these protesters, right? So we could just toss that one aside. Um, I I think actually that if I were just judging him based on what he said in the call, if I were an investor just looking at the call, putting aside the track record of Tesla, putting aside his extraordinary what he's done at SpaceX, just listening to this CEO, I as an investor would say, no, really, I'd rather you stayed at Dodge. I wouldn't want you to be back at Tesla. Because this is a guy who was saying things, as you said, with conspiracy theories that bordered on delusional, disconnected from reality, in ways that aren't really, you know, signs of great management. I wouldn't bet against Elon's ability to return to Tesla and become a great CEO, but this was not evidence that he is.

Well, Gotham, if it gets to the idea of credibility, I I mean, okay, let's leave aside the conspiracy theories for a moment. Elon Musk does not have a wonderful track record of meeting targets, especially not in a timely fashion, but some of them not even at all. And so when he says, we'll be coming out with a lower cost car still by the end of the first half, or when he talks about potentially having autonomous driving being profitable by next year or thousands of Optimus robots in Tesla's factories next year, how are we to take those comments?

Well, I mean, you you put your finger on it, right? If anyone other than Elon Musk were saying that, people would not even take it seriously. Let's break it down a little bit, right? On autonomous driving, Tesla is not the leader. Waymo is. If you're talking about assisted driving, Tesla systems are not the leader. Mercedes probably is. If you're talking about Optimus, the robots he demonstrated weren't even autonomous. Like I don't even know where Tesla is in the game of creating those kinds of robots. And the only line in their annual report that actually was good news, their power storage business, is the thing that is most vulnerable to Chinese pressure because they depend on Chinese on Chinese lithium iron phosphate batteries. This is This is just a story where you have to believe this guy can work miracles, right? And then everything comes together. And if you don't believe that, this is not a story that makes any sense.