In an interview with Esquire magazine, Hollywood heart throb and trend setter George Clooney has some not very nice things to say about the trendy electric car that, for the moment at least, is the must-have accessory for California’s millionaires.
“I had a Tesla,” Clooney told Esquire. “I was one of the first cats with a Tesla. I think I was, like, number five on the list. But I’m telling you, I’ve been on the side of the road a while in that thing. And I said to them, ‘Look, guys, why am I always stuck on the side of the fucking road? Make it work, one way or another.'”
Clooney was one of the first owners of the car when it hit the market in 2008, but in 2012 he put the car up for auction after driving only 1,700 miles in it. The car sold at the 2012 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance weekend showcase to raise money for his charity. The insight from Esquire goes some way to explaining why he drove the car so little.
This is the latest in a series of public knocks that the company has received. In October, the company saw its shares tank by 17 percent, wiping $4.1 billion off its value. October also saw three high-profile incinerations of its latest Model S.
Tesla has been fighting claims that it is overvalued financially for some time, and in a recent interview on Bloomberg TV, Tesla’s biggest investor and co-founder Elon Musksaid said that “the stock price that we have is more than we have any right to deserve.”
The latest statement from Clooney could be a sign that Hollywood’s fascination with the Palo Alto start-up is also beginning to wane.