Might Elon Musk Get The US Authorities To Purchase A Bunch Of Teslas?

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Final Up to date on: eighth February 2025, 12:01 am

It’s no secret — Elon Musk has been one thing like a shadow president early on in Donald Trump’s second time period within the White Home. Up to now, that has largely targeted on issues not very associated to Tesla. Nevertheless, one has to marvel how a lot Tesla enterprise would possibly begin getting rolled into White Home enterprise. Possibly….

After all, there may be not speculated to be any humorous enterprise happening between a rich businessman’s firms and his position within the authorities when he takes on a authorities place, however, properly … I virtually began laughing there. Donald Trump is thought to be extraordinarily corrupt. There’s corruption working by the veins of his White Home, as there was to an insane diploma throughout his first time period. Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, and Donald Trump walked away with billions of {dollars} of help from different nations throughout and after Trump’s final time in workplace. There have been quite a few different examples of nepotism and favoritism as properly. And Trump’s method to enterprise has lengthy been modeled after — and linked to — New York Metropolis mafia norms. You scratch my again, I’ll scratch yours. You don’t, and I would simply have somebody come to your knees — or worse.

Musk might imagine he’s a good and goal individual, however he all the time assumes he and his companies are unmatched throughout the board of their markets and deserve the world. It might simply be “logical” that Tesla would win large contracts and get large orders from the federal authorities. So, with Musk such a giant a part of Trump’s present group, on one hand, it might not be stunning in any respect if Tesla abruptly acquired some large orders from the US authorities — for vehicles, EV chargers, and/or battery storage methods.

Nevertheless … there are few potential dampeners for Elon Musk and Tesla right here.

To start with, Musk has utterly caved on quite a few Tesla-related subjects previously yr. He has claimed local weather change isn’t such an excessive menace in any case (insanely idiotic), claimed that we really shouldn’t decrease fossil gasoline manufacturing, and claimed on a number of events that the EV trade shouldn’t be getting help from the federal government. Tesla very just lately wiped outdated content material off its web site, together with its mission, to speed up the transition to sustainable power. Elon Musk has made a U-turn on what constructed Tesla as much as the place it’s right this moment. (Good luck with that.) Within the meantime, Trump hasn’t actually budged or given an inch to EVs. He has stated they’re not for everybody, and he hasn’t precisely given glowing reward to Tesla automobiles. In actual fact, at a number of occasions, he has derided the corporate. Who wants enemies if you’ve acquired pals like these?!

Reportedly, Trump finds Musk a bit annoying and really bizarre. There’s an opportunity — that is going to shock you — there’s an opportunity Trump used Musk for his recognition and cash as a way to get elected however is raring to dump him overboard as soon as given the chance. There’s additionally newer reporting out that “Elon Musk is driving Trumpworld completely insane.” It appears a whole lot of different influential individuals round Trump are actually desirous to push Musk and his chaos crew into the closest deep physique of water. “Even the individuals closest to Donald Trump are struggling below Elon Musk’s sudden takeover of the chief department, and so they’re turning to an surprising savior to intervene: White Home Chief of Workers Susie Wiles,” The New Republic prints. “In an interview with MSNBC’s Ali Vitali, Wired’s Jake Lahut revealed Friday {that a} slew of longtime Trump loyalists have turned to the so-called ‘ice maiden‘ to liberate the administration from Musk’s affect.” If Musk will get dumped within the Atlantic Ocean — or possibly extra appropriately, the Arctic Ocean — it may not be really easy to persuade Trump that the federal authorities should purchase a bunch of Tesla automobiles. Or … possibly agreeing to purchase a bunch of Teslas for some peace and quiet within the West Wing is the answer everybody needs. (Truthfully, although, I believe that’s an unlikely answer.)

Then there’s the matter of Hertz shopping for tens of 1000’s of Teslas solely to show round and ditch them. Hertz discovered that Tesla automobiles had been concerned in additional accidents than typical, upkeep took too lengthy and was too costly, and the vehicles ate by tires. If Trump is already biased towards EVs and anybody concerned in procurement selections for the federal authorities introduced these issues up, it’s laborious to think about Trump greenlighting mass-scale EV procurement, even procurement of Teslas. It’s simple to see him utilizing the chance to trash Tesla and Elon.

And that truly brings us to a different factor of the story. Donald needs to be #1, needs to be seen as the large boss, needs the world to revolve round him. Elon needs all the identical issues, and he typically will get extra public consideration than Donald. This would possibly begin to actually grate on Trump’s ego. It’s simple to think about Trump changing into resentful of Musk and dealing to hinder and hurt the bizarre geek fairly than turn out to be buddy buddy with him.

We’ll see. Yet another factor that’s no secret is Tesla gross sales have been struggling these days. Tesla had a year-over-year gross sales decline in 2024, which was its first one for the reason that Mannequin S got here out (in 2012). It seems that gross sales are already off to a rocky begin in 2025. If issues proceed to go within the fallacious route for Tesla, and Musk will get determined, you can very simply think about him forcing federal procurements of Tesla automobiles — and arising with rationalizations for why it completely made sense and wasn’t resulting from corruption or getting favors from Trump.

I don’t actually know what I believe, however compelled to guess, my guess is that Musk doesn’t really safe notable Tesla fleet purchases from the Trump admin. It doesn’t appear like he has a lot curiosity in Tesla any extra, and he doesn’t wish to look determined and admit he has made poor selections. However who is aware of?… If issues get unhealthy at Tesla, all bets are off the desk.

Some other ideas on the query within the title and among the factors introduced up right here?