By Michael Elkins
Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) is facing renewed calls for the electric vehicle company to create a department to field media requests following multiple tweets by centibillionaire CEO, Elon Musk, last week concerning the company’s workforce.
An email seen by Reuters stated that Musk had a “super bad feeling” about the economy and called for a hiring freeze as well as a 10% cut in the workforce. Without a department to respond to media requests for information, reports ran rampant and the company’s share price fell drastically on Friday.
Musk later clarified on Twitter that the salaried workforce was likely to remain flat and the hourly workforce was likely to increase.
In 2020, Tesla became the first mass-market automaker to dissolve its press relations division. Musk, instead, decided that he would handle much of the tasks himself on Twitter. Now Gary Black, the managing partner at The Future Fund and a prominent Tesla supporter, has taken to Twitter to voice his support for the return of an official press relations department.
“I’ve said this many times about TSLA’s refusal to invest in PR,” wrote Black. “You can’t complain you lost if you never showed up for the game.”
Tesla’s share price fell nearly 10 percent on Friday and investors may simply want a PR department to help quell volatility.