Elon Musk mocks Tesla short-sellers and naysayers, starts selling ‘short shorts’
- Tesla has surpassed Toyota Motor Corp as the world’s most valuable carmaker
- Musk has often taken umbrage at sceptical investors who believe the company is overpriced
Tesla founder Elon Musk is ruthlessly mocking the carmaker’s doubters who sell the company short by selling short shorts with the company logo.
Musk on Sunday followed through on a threat made last week by offering red satin shorts for sale on the company website – which promptly crashed from the volume of orders, or perhaps mere curiosity.
“This item is out of stock,” the Tesla site says, above the description of the athletic wear priced at US$69.420.
The irascible Musk, a frequent Twitter user, has regularly battled with sceptical investors who believe the company is overpriced and short Tesla stock, placing bets that the shares will fall.
Instead, last week Tesla raced ahead of Toyota to become the world’s biggest carmaker by market capitalisation, prompting Musk to announce plans for the new product, featuring the company logo in gold on the front, and “S3XY” across the back – a play on words as well as a reference to Tesla models S, 3, X and Y.
“Dang, we broke the website,” Musk tweeted Sunday afternoon about the shorts, which he promised to gift to market regulators at the Securities and Exchange Commission, a regular target of his jabs after repeated clashes over his tweets.