Speaker 1: Let's say good morning right now to ABC's technology reporter
Speaker 1: Mike Debuski.
Speaker 2: Morning, Mike, good morning. How are you good.
Speaker 1: So yesterday first quarter earnings report for Tesla was released
Speaker 1: and it was not a great one.
Speaker 2: It was not Yeah, revenues for this company. Automotive revenues
Speaker 2: were down twenty percent, Total revenues for the company were
Speaker 2: down nine percent, and overall profits down seventy one percent.
Speaker 2: Amy So this is not great for Tesla. Obviously, a
Speaker 2: hugely prominent electric vehicle manufacturer, used to be the biggest
Speaker 2: electric vehicle manufacturer in the world that has since been
Speaker 2: surpassed by a Chinese company. Obviously, the CEO of that company,
Speaker 2: Elon Musk, has been generating some controversy for his actions
Speaker 2: at the Department of Government Efficiency, and this was our
Speaker 2: first real indicator as to what effect Elon Musk is
Speaker 2: having on Tesla sales. Obviously, we've seen major protest movements
Speaker 2: crop up across the country at ten dealerships Tesla charging stations.
Speaker 2: This protest movement calls itself the Tesla takedown, and these
Speaker 2: are people who are dissatisfied with Elon Musk's moves at
Speaker 2: the federal government. His efforts to trim the federal workforce.
Speaker 2: I've spoken to these protesters. They say Elon Musk is
Speaker 2: an unelected billionaire wreaking havoc on our federal government and
Speaker 2: on people's lives. And clearly that seems to be showing
Speaker 2: up at Tesla's dealerships for Tesla deliveries and sales, you know,
Speaker 2: and you know, to say nothing of the stock price
Speaker 2: of Tesla, which was down pretty dramatically yesterday though is
Speaker 2: trading slightly up in pre market trading today. So would be.
Speaker 1: Interesting to see what happens with that as he exits
Speaker 1: his role at DOGE, because he had said one hundred
Speaker 1: days and he's done, so that's like the end of April.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he made sort of more you know, mention
Speaker 2: of that yesterday after the earnings report was released. During
Speaker 2: an earnings call, Elon Musk said that his work at
Speaker 2: DOGE is pretty much done and that he plans to
Speaker 2: step back. He was always a temporary federal worker, right.
Speaker 2: His status at DOJE was always had sort of this
Speaker 2: time limit on it, and that time limit comes due
Speaker 2: next month, so it seems like he's not going to renew.
Speaker 2: He says his work is pretty much done as I mentioned.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it seems like he's going to take a
Speaker 2: step back to focus a little bit more on Tesla,
Speaker 2: which is facing a number of challenges right now. Aside
Speaker 2: from sort of the controversies that its CEO connotes on
Speaker 2: the brand, they're also facing increased competition from a sort
Speaker 2: of resurgent establishment automakers both from here and abroad. The
Speaker 2: sales are down in Europe, sales are down in China,
Speaker 2: and he has mentioned that the tariffs that the Trump
Speaker 2: administration has imposed on the automotive sector will have an
Speaker 2: effect on the company, despite the fact that Tesla builds
Speaker 2: all of its domestic market Tesla's here in Texas and
Speaker 2: in California. They do say that the tariffs on components automotive,
Speaker 2: you know, parts are going to have an impact on
Speaker 2: Tesla prices and therefore Tesla sales. So a lot of
Speaker 2: challenges that this company's facing.
Speaker 1: Okay, so I want to move on because we have
Speaker 1: a very important happy birthday.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's absolutely right. Twenty years ago today was the
Speaker 2: first YouTube video. It's hard to believe that this company,
Speaker 2: this platform is now twenty years old, but yes, on
Speaker 2: April twenty third of two thousand and five, This video
Speaker 2: is called Me at the Zoo was uploaded to the platform.
Speaker 2: Here's what it sounded like. All right, so here we
Speaker 2: are one of the elephants and the cooping book these
Speaker 2: guys is that they have really really really long.
Speaker 1: From thanks.
Speaker 2: So a pretty innocuous video, I think it's fair to say,
Speaker 2: but that was Jawad Kareem. He was one of three
Speaker 2: founders of YouTube uploading this video to the platform. Interestingly enough,
Speaker 2: these are three ex PayPal employees who started a video
Speaker 2: dating service. Essentially, this was their attempt to connect people
Speaker 2: on the relatively early Internet, but they found that people
Speaker 2: were using the video component of that dating service for
Speaker 2: all kinds of things, so they decided to spin it
Speaker 2: off into its own standalone video streaming platform called YouTube.
Speaker 2: It quickly became very popular. By March of two thousand
Speaker 2: and six, just a few months after that video was uploaded,
Speaker 2: YouTube was hosting twenty five million videos. About twenty thousand
Speaker 2: new videos were being uploaded to the platform every day,
Speaker 2: and amy that required a lot of computing power. They
Speaker 2: were also dealing with copyright claims from music studios and
Speaker 2: movie studios mad that people were uploading copyrighted material to
Speaker 2: the platform, so Google stepped in in two thousand and
Speaker 2: six to acquire the company for one point sixty five
Speaker 2: billion dollars. Now, according to Nielsen, Americans watch about a
Speaker 2: billion hours of YouTube content every day.
Speaker 1: Well, Mike, I can tell you that I've already been
Speaker 1: watching it because I had to pull a clip from
Speaker 1: a segment that I'm going to do next. I had
Speaker 1: to pull a clip from The Shining, which I have
Speaker 1: not seen and refused to watch.
Speaker 2: And also it is crazy. That's a great movie. It's
Speaker 2: so good.
Speaker 1: A right, I've got the Big Bear Eagle Cam on
Speaker 1: YouTube and it's live all the time in the thing
Speaker 1: because our little eaglits, Sonny and Gizmo are growing bigger
Speaker 1: every day. ABC's Mike Tubuski, thanks so much.
Speaker 2: Of course, they take care, right,