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Tesla boss Musk: "No contract has yet been signed"
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Ding Ting / imago images / Xinhua
The development on the stock exchange is largely based on expectations.
And they are usually very high, especially at Tesla.
The latest fireworks display at the e-car manufacturer was based on the assumption that a major order from the car rental company Hertz had actually been received.
But now Tesla boss Elon Musk let it be known that the deal with Hertz is not yet dry.
No contract has yet been signed, wrote Musk on Twitter.
At first there was no reaction from Hertz.
Musk responded to a tweet from fans thanking Tesla for the price increase.
The automaker's market capitalization had jumped over a trillion dollars by the end of October.
It also cemented Musk's top position in the ranking of the world's richest people.
Shortly before that, the car rental company Hertz had announced that they had ordered 100,000 cars from Tesla, which should be delivered by the end of 2022.
It would be the largest single order for Tesla to date.
"If any of this relates to Hertz, I would like to emphasize that no contract has been signed yet," wrote Musk, referring to the rise in Tesla stock. The deal with Hertz also has no impact on the e-carmaker's profitability. "Tesla has far more demand than production," Musk tweeted. Cars will only be sold to Hertz with the same margin as private customers. Musk is likely to allude to the fact that high discounts are often granted for large orders.
Musk's tweet is also irritating because he himself had written about a deal with Hertz in the past tense: "To be clear, there are no discounts for vehicles that have been sold to Hertz," he replied on October 26th to the post of one Twitter user who praised the Hertz deal.
Since he was using the past tense ("sold"), it seemed as if the business was long gone.
Musk's tweets are also interesting because they could contain information relevant to the stock market.
Musk has had trouble with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in the past for tweeting content that could affect the stock market price.
Not only for Tesla, but also for Hertz, the announcement about the major order was a PR spectacle.
With the order from Tesla, the proportion of electric vehicles in Hertz's global fleet should increase to over 20 percent, according to the car rental company.
Hertz had given no indication that the Tesla deal could not yet be sealed.
Hertz also announced that the first Teslas would be available at rental stations as early as the beginning of November.
The purchase of the vehicles would be the company's first major initiative since bankruptcy proceedings closed in June.
Hertz had applied for bankruptcy protection in the Corona crisis.
According to its own information, Hertz wants to build "the largest electric vehicle fleet in North America and one of the largest in the world."
The schedule for the Grünheide plant could fluctuate
The major Hertz order corresponds to around a tenth of Tesla's current annual manufacturing capacity. In order to be able to meet global demand, Tesla also wants to build a plant in Germany. But because environmental groups have reported concerns about the factory building in Grünheide near Berlin, Tesla's schedule could tip. Tesla boss Musk is currently striving for the first vehicles to roll off the production line in Grünheide by December at the latest. The final approval of the state is still pending, because a new online discussion must first be evaluated.
This replay of the online discussion for the construction of the factory starts this Tuesday.
It should last until November 22nd.
A first online consultation ended on October 14th.
After discussing over 800 objections, environmental groups had accused the country of having been made public too late.
The State Environment Agency then decided to repeat the procedure for safety reasons.
However, the Ministry of the Environment spoke of a legal conception that deviated from the previous interpretation.
The information received so far in the first consultation will be examined, it said.
The environmental associations had rated the repetition as positive, but were dissatisfied, among other things, because no new public interpretation of Tesla's application was planned for the factory.
mmq / Reuters / dpa-AFX