Elon Musk closes the door on Tesla Phone but keeps a glimmer of hope

The company's CEO would launch a smartphone on one condition only

Tesla Phone

Photo by: InsideEVs

By: Riccardo Ciriaco

Published by: Brian Potter

Nov 7, 2024 at 4:10am ET

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Electric cars, energy storage systems, social networks and even space rockets, neural chips and, finally, politics. Elon Musk is certainly not one to shy away from new ventures. Over the course of his career, the South African CEO has experimented with almost everything. But not telephony.

So why not imagine a Tesla phone? After all, there are plenty of fans who would love to hold a mobile phone with the company's now iconic T in their hands, perhaps to connect to their Model S, 3, X, or Y.

The idea has been mooted for some time, but now Elon Musk himself is broaching the subject. However, the histrionic boss is shattering the dreams of Tesla fans. Speaking on the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast, Elon Musk explains that a Tesla Phone is not on the agenda at the moment.

"Tesla would be better placed than any other company in the world to create a phone that is different from Android and iPhone. But it's not a product we want to develop, unless there are constraints or something like that.

A case in point?

If Apple and Google/Android started doing bad things, like censoring applications or acting as 'gatekeepers' in a negative sense, then I think we would produce a phone".

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Always going against the grain

In short, a mobile phone 'made by Musk' would only see the light of day in a Twitter-like operation, which led the supermanager to buy the social network (renaming it X) purely because - in his words - "it's important to have a shared digital space, where a wide range of points of view can be discussed in a healthy way, without resorting to violence", given that today there is "a great danger that social media will divide into far-right or far-left echo chambers, generating even more hatred and dividing our society".

So at a time when smartphone manufacturers are jumping into the world of four-wheeled electric vehicles, such as Huawei, Xiaomi and even Google/Waymo and Apple (with Apple abandoning the project), Tesla is once again differentiating itself, by deciding not to go the other way. And this is despite the fact that the company is "much more than just a manufacturer of electric cars". That's also what Elon Musk says.

Source: Teslarati

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