Tesla's annual marketing expenses are only 180 million yuan, Geely's are 20 times that, and Volkswagen Group's are as high as 162 billion yuan.

Tesla disbanded its core public relations team. Currently, most of the media's first-hand information about Tesla is obtained through Musk's personal Twitter account.

It is indeed unusual for a car company to not have a public relations department.

Yang Xueliang, who once served as Geely's public relations director and is now the vice president of Geely Auto Group, posted on Weibo that he felt "a chill at the back of his head."

For Tesla, because it has its own topic and traffic, its brand image is deeply rooted in people's hearts without any publicity. It must be said that Musk has saved Tesla a lot of public relations expenses because of the pioneering image he has always built.

However, Tesla is not popular in traditional media. Musk has publicly stated many times that Tesla has been deliberately discredited by some media.

This may also have contributed to Musk's decision to disband the public relations department - the relationship with the media is not that close anyway, so it's better not to have a public relations department that connects with them.

Among car companies, Tesla, which focuses on cost-effectiveness, spends very little on marketing, even less than supercar brands with extremely low sales such as Ferrari and Bugatti.

According to the "Automotive Industry Marketing Expenditure List" released by Marketing, in 2019, the Volkswagen Group (excluding Audi and Lamborghini) had the highest marketing expenditure among major global automakers, with marketing expenses equivalent to approximately RMB 162 billion. Honda and Daimler ranked second and third respectively.

Tesla's marketing expenses are only 186 million yuan, which is inconsistent with its global popularity.

It is worth mentioning that Geely's marketing expenses are in the first tier among domestic car companies, reaching 4.332 billion yuan, more than 20 times that of Tesla.

With the dissolution of the public relations department, Tesla's marketing costs may be further reduced, which may not necessarily be a bad thing for Tesla, which prefers a direct sales model.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.