Gary Zhou 
Apparently, Tesla has a new plan for dealing with journalists: don’t bother with them at all.
The electric car company has reportedly disbanded its global public relations unit, leaving the press at the world’s most valuable automaker with no formal point of touch.
According to Electrek, the decision to disband the department was confirmed “at the highest level at Tesla,” and virtually every employee who used to work in Tesla’s PR office has either moved to a different role at the company or left entirely.
While the Silicon Valley corporation still has several PR operators in Europe and Asia, this past December the last person to head the global communications office quit and earlier this year other key staffers followed.
This leaves CEO Elon Musk as the only public correspondent for Tesla as the company has not responded to press inquiries in months. Tesla issues occasional press releases, but on his Twitter account, Musk himself often breaks news about the company, its business and its technology.
The billionaire tech tycoon was also outspoken about his media contempt. In a New York Times interview, he recently complained that press coverage of Tesla’s September “Battery Day” event showed “a sad reflection of their understanding,” even though after Musk’s presentation, reporters were not able to ask questions.
The 49-year-old entrepreneur has also blasted the media for referring to him as a billionaire and having a “systemic negative & political bias about almost everything.”
“The holier-than-thou hypocrisy of big media companies who lay claim to the truth, but publish only enough to sugarcoat the lie, is why the public no longer respects them,” Musk tweeted in May 2018.
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