Elon Musk stirred up some friendly competition via Twitter when he responded to a USA Today article discussing Daimler's bet on electric vehicle (EV) technology. Musk said that the “$1 billion bet” the company was putting into taking on Tesla was not enough for “a giant” like Daimler and that it was “off by a zero.”
That's not a lot of money for a giant like Daimler/Mercedes. Wish they'd do more. Off by a zero.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 24, 2017
Daimler didn't take issue with Musk's criticism. In fact, they pointed out that the headline of the piece was missing the point, and that they're investing that extra zero, more than $10 billion, into the next generation EV, plus another billion into batteries:
You're absolutely right @elonmusk. Here the missing zero: Investing >$10bn in nxt gen EVs & >$1bn in battery prod. ? https://t.co/Tk747isWAc
— Daimler AG (@Daimler) September 25, 2017
When a Twitter user pointed out that Musk wasn't really the force behind Daimler's $10 billion investment, and that the investment preceded the criticism, Musk responded by joking that he actually had caused the investment:
Yes, I did 🙂
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 26, 2017
This could technically be just a joke, or, as TechCrunch points out, a reference to Tesla's pioneering work with EVs — the reader can interpret it to their liking.
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