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Elon Musk is a genius, but Tesla’s fate is ‘sealed’ over sluggish sales, claims Bob Lutz
It appears that former GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz has done a 180-degree-turn on Tesla. Just a month after praising the Model 3’s improving quality and the company’s leadership, the former GM executive changed gears, declaring Tesla’s impending doom over what he argued was the company’s “hopeless” situation.
Lutz’s most recent comments came in an interview with German-language Swiss news outlet Handelszeitung, where he discussed his working relationship with the late Lee Iacocca, as well as his views on the advent of electric propulsion. Lutz stated that he has always been a proponent of EVs, and in this sense, he is right. The Chevrolet Volt, GM’s most successful hybrid vehicle to date, after all, was brought to the market in no small part due to Lutz. “I am convinced of the electrification. The electric motor will prevail in the industry,” he said.
Speaking about Tesla, Lutz admitted that the company’s CEO, Elon Musk, is a brilliant, strong leader. Nevertheless, Lutz also argued that just like other intelligent people, there are things that Musk does not know, and one of these is running a car company.
“He is brilliant, a genius. But like many very intelligent people, he does not know what he does not know. He does not know how a car company has to be run. He does not have the financial side under control. That’s why Tesla is in very bad shape. Elon got into trouble and did not listen to people who know each other. That’s the danger with such a kind of leader,” Lutz said.
When asked by the publication if he does not believe in Tesla’s success, Lutz proved even more dismissive. Similar to his previous comments about Tesla prior to his Model 3 observations last month, Lutz argued that Tesla is in dire straits. The former GM Vice Chairman blasted Tesla’s lineup, from the aging Model S, the “ugly” Model X, and the Model 3, which is allegedly seeing a problem in demand.
“The fate of Tesla is sealed. The situation is almost hopeless, given the losses they are currently writing. Demand has given way. Tesla had 400,000 pre-orders for the Model 3. In fact, they only sold 80,000 or 90,000 of them, and they have trouble selling more. The Model S is now ten years old, and sales are sluggish. The same picture shows the Model X, the SUV with the wing doors – that’s an ugly vehicle anyway. Tesla will have about a year until each of the big global auto companies has its own fleet of electric vehicles on offer. These cars will be as good or even better than Tesla’s,” he said.
Tesla, for its part, has issued a response to Bob Lutz’s comments, politely pointing out that Model 3 deliveries reached 77,550 units worldwide in Q2 2019 alone. Tesla has delivered 145,000 Model 3 in 2018 alone, and 128,450 more have been delivered in 2019 as of the end of the second quarter. Overall, that’s a total of 273,450 Model 3 delivered, making the upper end of Lutz’s Model 3 sales estimates just around 183,000 units off. The company also reiterated CEO Elon Musk’s point that Model 3 demand continues to be healthy.
Quite interestingly, even Lutz’s latest negative comments against Tesla did not have any references to the build quality of the company’s vehicles. This is in line with his conclusions on his post at motoring website Road & Track last month, where he stated that “While I continue to be critical of Tesla’s business model and Musk’s strategy, it was impossible to find fault with the visual quality of that Model 3. It looked like a fiberglass model as seen in design, before the production go-ahead. In those models, the panels are not assembled: it’s all one surface, and the separations are simulated by a routed groove.”
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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang explains difference between Tesla FSD and Alpamayo
“Tesla’s FSD stack is completely world-class,” the Nvidia CEO said.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has offered high praise for Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) system during a Q&A at CES 2026, calling it “world-class” and “state-of-the-art” in design, training, and performance.
More importantly, he also shared some insights about the key differences between FSD and Nvidia’s recently announced Alpamayo system.
Jensen Huang’s praise for Tesla FSD
Nvidia made headlines at CES following its announcement of Alpamayo, which uses artificial intelligence to accelerate the development of autonomous driving solutions. Due to its focus on AI, many started speculating that Alpamayo would be a direct rival to FSD. This was somewhat addressed by Elon Musk, who predicted that “they will find that it’s easy to get to 99% and then super hard to solve the long tail of the distribution.”
During his Q&A, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was asked about the difference between FSD and Alpamayo. His response was extensive:
“Tesla’s FSD stack is completely world-class. They’ve been working on it for quite some time. It’s world-class not only in the number of miles it’s accumulated, but in the way it’s designed, the way they do training, data collection, curation, synthetic data generation, and all of their simulation technologies.
“Of course, the latest generation is end-to-end Full Self-Driving—meaning it’s one large model trained end to end. And so… Elon’s AD system is, in every way, 100% state-of-the-art. I’m really quite impressed by the technology. I have it, and I drive it in our house, and it works incredibly well,” the Nvidia CEO said.
Nvidia’s platform approach vs Tesla’s integration
Huang also stated that Nvidia’s Alpamayo system was built around a fundamentally different philosophy from Tesla’s. Rather than developing self-driving cars itself, Nvidia supplies the full autonomous technology stack for other companies to use.
“Nvidia doesn’t build self-driving cars. We build the full stack so others can,” Huang said, explaining that Nvidia provides separate systems for training, simulation, and in-vehicle computing, all supported by shared software.
He added that customers can adopt as much or as little of the platform as they need, noting that Nvidia works across the industry, including with Tesla on training systems and companies like Waymo, XPeng, and Nuro on vehicle computing.
“So our system is really quite pervasive because we’re a technology platform provider. That’s the primary difference. There’s no question in our mind that, of the billion cars on the road today, in another 10 years’ time, hundreds of millions of them will have great autonomous capability. This is likely one of the largest, fastest-growing technology industries over the next decade.”
He also emphasized Nvidia’s open approach, saying the company open-sources its models and helps partners train their own systems. “We’re not a self-driving car company. We’re enabling the autonomous industry,” Huang said.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk confirms xAI’s purchase of five 380 MW natural gas turbines
The deal, which was confirmed by Musk on X, highlights xAI’s effort to aggressively scale its operations.
xAI, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, has purchased five additional 380 MW natural gas turbines from South Korea’s Doosan Enerbility to power its growing supercomputer clusters.
The deal, which was confirmed by Musk on X, highlights xAI’s effort to aggressively scale its operations.
xAI’s turbine deal details
News of xAI’s new turbines was shared on social media platform X, with user @SemiAnalysis_ stating that the turbines were produced by South Korea’s Doosan Enerbility. As noted in an Asian Business Daily report, Doosan Enerbility announced last October that it signed a contract to supply two 380 MW gas turbines for a major U.S. tech company. Doosan later noted in December that it secured an order for three more 380 MW gas turbines.
As per the X user, the gas turbines would power an additional 600,000+ GB200 NVL72 equivalent size cluster. This should make xAI’s facilities among the largest in the world. In a reply, Elon Musk confirmed that xAI did purchase the turbines. “True,” Musk wrote in a post on X.
xAI’s ambitions
Recent reports have indicated that xAI closed an upsized $20 billion Series E funding round, exceeding the initial $15 billion target to fuel rapid infrastructure scaling and AI product development. The funding, as per the AI startup, “will accelerate our world-leading infrastructure buildout, enable the rapid development and deployment of transformative AI products.”
The company also teased the rollout of its upcoming frontier AI model. “Looking ahead, Grok 5 is currently in training, and we are focused on launching innovative new consumer and enterprise products that harness the power of Grok, Colossus, and 𝕏 to transform how we live, work, and play,” xAI wrote in a post on its website.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s xAI closes upsized $20B Series E funding round
xAI announced the investment round in a post on its official website.
xAI has closed an upsized $20 billion Series E funding round, exceeding the initial $15 billion target to fuel rapid infrastructure scaling and AI product development.
xAI announced the investment round in a post on its official website.
A $20 billion Series E round
As noted by the artificial intelligence startup in its post, the Series E funding round attracted a diverse group of investors, including Valor Equity Partners, Stepstone Group, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Qatar Investment Authority, MGX, and Baron Capital Group, among others.
Strategic partners NVIDIA and Cisco Investments also continued support for building the world’s largest GPU clusters.
As xAI stated, “This financing will accelerate our world-leading infrastructure buildout, enable the rapid development and deployment of transformative AI products reaching billions of users, and fuel groundbreaking research advancing xAI’s core mission: Understanding the Universe.”
xAI’s core mission
Th Series E funding builds on xAI’s previous rounds, powering Grok advancements and massive compute expansions like the Memphis supercluster. The upsized demand reflects growing recognition of xAI’s potential in frontier AI.
xAI also highlighted several of its breakthroughs in 2025, from the buildout of Colossus I and II, which ended with over 1 million H100 GPU equivalents, and the rollout of the Grok 4 Series, Grok Voice, and Grok Imagine, among others. The company also confirmed that work is already underway to train the flagship large language model’s next iteration, Grok 5.
“Looking ahead, Grok 5 is currently in training, and we are focused on launching innovative new consumer and enterprise products that harness the power of Grok, Colossus, and 𝕏 to transform how we live, work, and play,” xAI wrote.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang explains difference between Tesla FSD and Alpamayo
Elon Musk confirms xAI’s purchase of five 380 MW natural gas turbines
