Lucid CEO has some harsh words for Tesla’s 'distracted' leadership

Lucid  (LCID) CEO Peter Rawlinson just aired out some of his frustrations with the individuals behind some of Tesla’s  (TSLA) latest business decisions.

The millionaire executive, who once worked for Tesla as a chief engineer, claimed in a new interview on BBC’s latest “Wake up to Money” podcast episode that he is seeing a “worrying trend” at Tesla, which is headed by Elon Musk.

Related: Elon Musk walks back on a tough Tesla decision he made weeks ago

“I really value my time at Tesla. I was there for three years from 2009 through 2012. And at that stage, Tesla was truly at the cutting edge developing the most advanced technology with a clarity of vision and purpose and an absolute singularity of mindset," said Rawlinson during the interview. "And what I'm seeing now is I'm seeing a worrying trend towards a sort of distraction.”

Rawlinson went on to state that Tesla is “losing its way” due to the company focusing on other interests.

“There's an interest in social media, even politics, and it's kind of losing its way,” said Rawlinson. “I don't see it having that singular sense of purpose, and I think it really falls to Lucid to take the technology to a whole new level now.”

The criticism from Rawlinson comes after Elon Musk’s 2022 purchase of Twitter, which is now known as X. Musk has since received criticism for the many controversial changes he made to the platform which include cracking down on content that he deems as misinformation (after firing Twitter’s original team responsible for doing so) and unbanning accounts of far-right extremists on the platform.

Musk also has been embroiled in a string of lawsuits from former Twitter employees who claim they were fired after raising concerns about certain cost-cutting moves that were being made at the company.

Many advertisers have also left X late last year after Musk endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory on the platform, which posed a threat to the company’s revenue.

In the midst of Twitter’s rocky transition into X under Musk’s leadership, Tesla is also facing a few of its own headwinds. Tesla laid off more than 10% of its employees last month due to “rapid growth” and a “duplication of roles and job functions” after reporting an 8.5% year-over-year decrease in vehicle sales in a press release announcing its first-quarter earnings for 2024.

“Decline in volumes was partially due to the early phase of the production ramp of the updated Model 3 at our Fremont factory and factory shutdowns resulting from shipping diversions caused by the Red Sea conflict and an arson attack at Gigafactory Berlin,” read the press release.

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