LVMH's ex-boss slams Tesla's Cybertruck as a 'big miss'
Count Pauline Brown, the former Chairman of LVMH North America, as one of the critics of Tesla’s (TSLA) new Cybertruck.
Amid much fanfare and merciless skewering of its design, CEO Elon Musk unveiled the eco-friendly truck last week. The rocky rollout and lackluster reviews of the Cybertruck’s design initially drove down Tesla’s stock, which recouped its losses after Musk revealed that over hundreds of thousands of customers had reserved orders for the vehicle.
Still, critics have taken aim at the Cybertruck’s unconventional design. And with that in mind, Brown had some strong words for one electric carmaker.
“I think Tesla, which I've talked about publicly, the launch of that truck — I think it's a disaster,” she told Yahoo Finance in a recent interview.
“I don't even think it would have been pleasing for Soviet-era armed trucks,” Brown said, adding that the vehicle’s strange design was “a big miss” for the electric car maker.
The author of the book “Aesthetic Intelligence” has ideas of her own for car designs, and her words carry some weight. LVMH (MC.PA) is the parent company of over 70 prestigious brands ranging from Christian Dior to Givenchy. LVMH is in the process of closing a $16.2 billion deal to acquire jeweler Tiffany (TIF).
When Musk unveiled the unconventional truck at an event in Los Angeles last week, the six-passenger pickup’s “armored glass” notoriously smashed during a demonstration.
Yet despite the rocky introduction, Musk boasted that the truck has secured around 250,000 orders as of this week.
Meanwhile, Brown has automobile ambitions of her own. She told Yahoo Finance that as a next possible opportunity, “I would love to take on the automotive world. Some brands are more elegantly designed than others, more interestingly designed than others.”
The reason is that few automakers “really think about the interiors from a textile standpoint,” she said, adding that most automakers rarely “use colors that feel different and interesting and exciting.”
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Alexandra Canal is a Producer at Yahoo Finance.
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