Business reporter, BBC News
Getty ImagesTesla has denied reports that it has contacted recruitment firms to launch a search for a replacement for Elon Musk as chief executive.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that the electric car firm’s board began looking for a successor to Mr Musk last month.
It said this was because of frustration around Mr Musk’s focus on his job in US President Donald Trump’s administration and Tesla’s sinking share price.
However, in statement on Thursday, Tesla said the report was “absolutely false” while Mr Musk wrote on his social media platform X that the paper was “a discredit to journalism”.
Tesla chair Robyn Denholm wrote on X: “There was a media report erroneously claiming that the Tesla Board had contacted recruitment firms to initiate a CEO search at the company.”
“This is absolutely false (and this was communicated to the media before the report was published).”
She added: “The CEO of Tesla is Elon Musk and the board is highly confident in his ability to continue executing on the exciting growth plan ahead.”
The denial comes after the Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources, wrote that Mr Musk was told by the board he needed to spend more time on Tesla and that he needed to say so publicly.
The paper said Mr Musk did not push back against the suggestion.
Last week, Mr Musk said on a conference call about earnings “I’ll be allocating far more of my time to Tesla” and pledged to “significantly” cut back his government role.
Writing on X on Thursday, Mr Musk was heavily critical of the Wall Street Journal’s reporting.
“It is an EXTREMELY BAD BREACH OF ETHICS that the WSJ would publish a DELIBERATELY FALSE ARTICLE and fail to include an unequivocal denial beforehand by the Tesla board of directors,” he said.
He later reposted a comment from an X user that called the paper “trash”.
Protests and boycotts
Mr Musk’s leadership of Trump’s newly created advisory body – the Department for Government Efficiency (Doge) – has attracted a lot of criticism.
Some customers of Tesla say they no longer feel loyal to the brand because of Mr Musk’s controversial political views and actions while in charge of Doge.
Some have pledged to boycott the firm while others have staged protests against it because of Mr Musk – in some cases causing criminal damage to dealerships.
Meanwhile, investors and analysts have said Mr Musk’s reputation and his juggling of high-level roles is part of the reason why Tesla struggling financially.
In March, Trump – with Mr Musk by his side – told reporters at the White House gardens anyone using violence against Tesla would “go through hell”.
He then pledged to buy a red Model-S, one of a number of Teslas lined up on the White House drive that day, to support the electric car firm.
‘I wear a lot of hats’
Temporary government employees, such as Mr Musk, are normally limited to working 130 days a year which, if counted from the day of Trump’s inauguration, will end in late May.
But it is unclear when Mr Musk, who contributed more than a quarter of a billion dollars to Trump’s re-election, will step down completely.
Trump said last month he would keep Mr Musk “as long as I could keep him”.
On Wednesday, Mr Musk, who also runs space firm SpaceX, made light of the idea he was doing too many jobs.
In a video posted on X in a White House cabinet meeting, he was wearing two baseball caps.
“They say I wear a lot of hats,” Mr Musk said in the video. “That’s true. Even my hat has a hat.”
Bloomberg reported that Mr Musk also said on Wednesday that Doge should examine the spending of the US central bank, the Federal Reserve, particularly the cost of renovating its headquarters.
Mr Musk has made similar comments before, raising the idea that the Fed should be audited. However, such a move would pose questions about the bank’s independence.
