At the company’s annual general meeting, CEO Musk announced that he would advertise the electric cars in the future. The US company had recently missed its margin target.

San Francisco The electric car manufacturer Tesla has traditionally avoided advertising, but CEO Elon Musk now wants to break with this line. “We’re going to try some advertising and see how it goes,” Musk said at Tesla’s shareholder meeting in Austin, Texas on Tuesday. Given the high demand, Tesla did not need paid ads for a long time.

Musk used his own popularity and other means as marketing tools – above all the online platform Twitter, which he has since taken over. But that seems to be increasingly exhausted – this year Tesla lowered the prices several times.

Tesla does not yet have a mature plan for advertising, Musk told the US broadcaster CNBC after the annual general meeting. “I’ve only just agreed to that, there’s no full strategy in place yet.”

However, ads could be a way to expand Tesla’s customer base. The e-car pioneer is pursuing ambitious growth targets, but the competition is getting fiercer. In addition, there is a threat of economic headwinds. Even Tesla is not “immune” to recession risks, Musk said. He expects a difficult economic environment in the next twelve months. Musk again criticized that the interest rate level of the US Federal Reserve is slowing down the economy. Higher interest rates make car loans, among other things, less attractive.