Elon Musk remarked that he would not thoughts Tesla going bankrupt, if this implies a rival firm builds a greater automotive, in accordance with a member of the agency’s board.

“I disagree at any time when Elon says I do not thoughts Tesla getting out of business if any individual else comes up with a greater automotive,” Hiromichi Mizuno, chief funding officer of the Japan Authorities Pension Funding Fund, instructed CNBC’s Dan Murphy on the World Authorities Summit on Tuesday.

“I feel that is his philosophy and Tesla’s philosophy,” stated Mizuno, who was chosen to hitch the corporate’s board in April 2020.

Tesla didn’t instantly reply to a CNBC request for remark.

Musk has beforehand stated that the automaker may have gone bankrupt a number of occasions in its virtually 20-year historical past. In November 2020, Musk stated the corporate was “a couple of month” away from falling out of business within the run-up to the manufacturing of its Mannequin 3 automotive, from mid-2017 to mid-2019.

In a separate interview with a Tesla homeowners membership, Musk stated that retaining the corporate out of chapter was “overwhelmingly” his concern, because the agency confronted manufacturing disruptions due to lockdowns in China. He additionally remarked that automakers typically “desperately wish to go bankrupt.”

Including to his many different enterprises, together with area exploration agency SpaceX, Musk final yr bought Twitter and has been pursuing drastic strategic modifications — from mass layoffs to an aggressive drive towards profitability. Traders query whether or not Musk is getting distracted, at a time when Tesla faces elevated competitors, macroeconomic uncertainty and regulatory scrutiny.

Reflecting on Musk’s mounting workload, Mizuno joked that he was uncertain whether or not the enigmatic billionaire is a “human or alien.”

Nonetheless, Mizuno backed Musk and prompt that he admired the tech magnate’s tenacity. “He appears to have unimaginable bandwidth over his work.”

He isn’t the one Tesla backer throwing their weight behind the agency’s CEO. Final month, David Wallerstein, chief “eXploration” officer at Tencent, stated that he nonetheless counts on Tesla “to maintain blowing our minds with what they do with know-how,” regardless of Musk’s distractions. The Chinese language tech large has owned a 5% stake in Tesla since 2017.

Though Tesla has made progress in reaching manufacturing and gross sales within the a whole bunch of 1000’s — final yr, the corporate delivered 1.31 million automobiles — over 80% of business gross sales nonetheless come from automobiles that are not absolutely electrical, Mizuno added.