‘Had more kids than they made cars’: Elon Musk’s dig at rival automaker

Image credit: @GalaxyHeroesGHC/Twitter

Elon Musk took aim at a rival automaker – and his own efforts to curb what he calls the global underpopulation crisis – with a tweet that had his followers in splits.

Musk aimed his dig at Lucid Motors, an American electric vehicle manufacturer that announced its quarterly earnings report on Wednesday. The EV maker delivered just 679 cars in the second quarter of 2022 – a fact that prompted the CEO of Tesla to joke he had had more children in the same time period.

“I had more kids in Q2 than they made cars!” Elon Musk quipped in response to a tweet on Lucid Motors’ performance in quarter two.

I had more kids in Q2 than they made cars!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 4, 2022

Musk’s own contribution to the world population aside (the tech billionaire has nine children), his company Tesla also outperformed Lucid in terms of vehicle deliveries. According to Tesla’s website, the electric automaker “produced over 258,000 vehicles and delivered over 254,000 vehicles” to Lucid Motors’ 679 cars. This, Tesla says, is “despite ongoing supply chain challenges and factory shutdowns”.

Meanwhile, Lucid cut its production targets again on Wednesday as logistical and supply chain issues translated to the demand for company’s vehicle overtaking output. "Our revised production guidance reflects the extraordinary supply chain and logistics challenges we encountered," Lucid’s CEO Peter Rawlinson said.

Musk, the chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, is far more in the news for his controversial tweets than he is for his work. More recently, headlines have been dominated with his deadlocked Twitter deal as well as his personal life after it was revealed that the world’s richest man secretly welcomed twins with a top Neuralink executive in November last year.