Summary
Elon Musk gave Donald Trump a scripted sales pitch during a White House event where Trump inspected Teslas.
Photographers captured Trump holding notes with phrases like “SAFEST car” and “affordable.” The stunt followed a 15% drop in Tesla’s stock, linked to backlash over Musk’s involvement in DOGE.
Trump defended Musk on Truth Social, blaming the decline on a “Radical Left” boycott.
Meanwhile, Musk’s other ventures, including X and SpaceX, are struggling with outages and test failures.
Sure, this defacto would make Tesla the standard electric car for the US. But I’ll note that the rest of the car world is already adopting the Tesla plug as their physical standard, so a future government (assuming you guys have any) could just pass a law that says Tesla cannot restrict the use of their charging stations, or add any extra fees for non-Tesla vehicles.
And either way, the mass conversion of the US to electric vehicles is still a good consolation prize, even if it locks in a regional monopoly for Tesla. Sometimes you take the wins where you can get them.