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Bob Lutz

Elon Musk, co-founder and CEO of Tesla Motors, has periodically taunted U.S. automakers saying that Detroit wants to be everything Tesla is if it could start over – a cooler, greener automaker who is headquartered in a better neighborhood.

“We’re a Silicon Valley company,” Musk, who is the inspiration of Tony Stark’s character in Iron Man, said. “Closer to an Apple or a Google than to a GM or Ford in the way we operate, the DNA, the operating system of Tesla. I don’t think that’s something that GM or Ford is going to be able to replicate — ever.”

To make his pointer stronger, Musk said: “What if (former GM product chief) Bob Lutz were to call up and say we’d like to buy Tesla, I would say, ‘You can’t afford it.’”

He even took a shot at Bob Lutz, former GM product chief. Speaking about Lutz’s statement on how the Chevrolet Volt is his biggest achievement in his career, Musk said: “not a very good car, not very exciting.”

Lutz response? “So far, all of Tesla’s shortcuts have failed,” Lutz told Reuters. “They seem to hold the usual Silicon Valley view that that region is the sole repository of brainpower in the United States and everyone east of the Sierras is a dim-witted dinosaur.”

Either way, Lutz still has respect for Tesla and Musk and says that the company “may still prove to be the exception.”

- By: Omar Rana

Source: Reuters