- From Tesla’s early days, Elon Musk pushed state and federal governments to support the EV industry.
- Now that Tesla’s well established, he’s pushing Trump to back policies that help Tesla but could hurt its competitors.
President-elect Donald Trump’s full-throated support for oil and gas drilling might be expected to send a chill through the electric vehicle industry were it not for a wild card in his fledgling administration: Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk.
Trump has long railed against EV mandates and subsidies. Then came August, when Musk endorsed Trump and began pouring millions of dollars into the Trump campaign. Not long after, Trump said he was now in favor of some market share for EVs.
“I have to be, you know, because Elon endorsed me very strongly,” Trump said at a rally in Atlanta.
What does the Trump administration mean for the future of electric vehicles?
Clean transportation advocates are hopeful that Musk will continue to influence Trump’s position on EVs.
“If there’s a silver lining” to Trump’s victory, said Ramses Madou, chair of the Open Mobility Foundation, “it’s that Elon Musk can dial back on Trump’s anti-EV-ness.”
Here are some of the issues facing supporters of electric cars and trucks, and how Musk might influence them.
BUYER INCENTIVES
Reuters and other news organizations reported Friday that Trump plans to end the $7,500 consumer tax credit for EVs — a move that Musk supports.
After building his company on the back of federally financed buyer incentives, Musk believes Tesla no longer needs them — and that taking away the subsidies will mainly hurt his competitors.
“Take away the subsidies,” Musk wrote on X in July. “It will only help Tesla.”
Why would a company turn away such free money? Because Tesla is profitable, and the EV business at the traditional automakers as yet is not. Taking away buyer credits would hurt them more than it would hurt Tesla, whose EV market share has begun to drop in the face of new competition.
But there’s more to the story: So far this year, Tesla has posted $4.79 billion in profit. Of that, $2.07 billion came from government-required credits bought from Tesla by other automakers. That’s 43% of net income.
The EV federal credit system is simple in concept: Sell too many gasoline-powered cars, you accumulate deficits. If most of the vehicles you sell are EVs, you earn credits. To avoid government penalties, deficit holders must buy credits from companies like Tesla.
In other words, Tesla’s competitors are directly and dramatically boosting Tesla’s profits with rich flows of cash that they otherwise might have used in their own EV development.
How do EV buyer incentives fit in, and why might Musk want to see them gone? The fewer EVs other carmakers sell, the more credit money Tesla takes in as pure profit, boosting its own stock price and putting pressure on the shares of competitors. Since the election, Tesla stock is up 28%, closing at $320.72 on Friday. Most other automakers’ shares are stuck in neutral.
FEDERAL GRANTS
Tesla doesn’t just build passenger vehicles, it builds commercial trucks too. At least it’s trying to. To great fanfare, Musk introduced the Tesla Semi all-electric big rig in 2017. To date, the company has sold very few. It plans to begin mass production in 2026. Meanwhile, traditional truck builders are selling their own electric big rigs, and can’t keep up with demand.
The demand is high because of government mandates in California, sweetened with generous state and federal grants worth billions. Few would buy an electric truck today without government help. A new diesel truck typically costs $150,000 to $200,000. An all-electric version costs two to three times that amount.
Cutting off those federal grants could help Tesla against the competition. It would hurt major truck makers and could destroy electric truck startup companies, while giving the long-delayed Tesla Semi time to catch up.
The federal grant money is available to buyers of hydrogen fuel-cell trucks too. Musk has long belittled fuel-cell vehicles and Trump has often talked about hydrogen cars blowing up like an “atomic bomb.” That’s a gross exaggeration, as gasoline, battery and hydrogen vehicles all are subject to fire and explosion, albeit in different ways. Nonetheless, if Trump asks Musk’s opinion on dropping support for hydrogen vehicles, Musk is sure to egg him on.
TARIFFS
Musk’s conversations with Trump on tariffs could be tricky. Tesla runs a huge assembly plant in Shanghai, subject to Chinese government control. While showing little self-regulation on issuing blistering attacks on politicians he does not like, Musk has only kind words for Chinese leaders including President Xi Jinping.
Early this year, Musk seemed to support trade barriers against a potential influx of Chinese electric vehicles to the United States, saying Chinese companies could “demolish” other EV makers around the world. Within months, though, he changed his tune, opposing tariffs on EVs because “things that inhibit freedom of exchange or distort the market are not good.”
One of the main pillars of Trump’s economic policy is “beautiful tariffs” of 60% or more on Chinese goods. Business leaders, economists and even members of his own party have warned that such a policy could boost inflation and hurt economic growth.
“Much of the goods America imports are intermediate goods used in the production of other things,” thus lifting costs across the board for products manufactured in the U.S. and causing economywide “self-harm,” according to Jonathan Humphrey, senior economist at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. He’s talking mainly about all the intermediary products that go into making cars, batteries and their enabling parts, even for goods made in America.
Trump is getting advice from all sides on the matter, and it remains to be seen whether decisions on tariffs go Musk’s way — or Xi’s.
CHARGING
Musk doesn’t talk much about federal funding for public EV charging stations, but it’s hard to see why he’d fight against it.
Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure bill devoted $5 billion to build public charging stations for cars and trucks every 50 miles along interstate highways. Tesla has built a widespread and dependable network of charging stations, and is now inviting owners of non-Tesla EVs to pay Tesla to use them, but more EV stations in more places will make things easier for owners of Teslas — and ease the need for Tesla to spend capital on building more of them.
Trump is unlikely to ax a program that will produce economic benefits across the country, in congressional districts red and blue. In any case, the money is already allocated, and “it would take an act of Congress to change that,” Debs Schrimmer of the U.S. Joint Office of Energy and Transportation said at the CoMotion LA mobility conference in Little Tokyo last week.
CERTAINTY
Musk has never been considered one to inject certainty into any situation. That adds to the tension around Trump’s economic plans.
Alex Gold, chief executive of BWD Strategic North America, is optimistic about the future for EVs, even under Trump.
“Rather than pulling back on clean energy, maybe he’ll just relax on the dirty [energy] so people can do both,” Gold said. “If Trump is pro-business, what business wants is certainty, and to make a U-turn right now would be surprising.”
