How Trump’s second term could be bad for EVs, but great for Tesla
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Hi, welcome to decoder. I knew I petaled ter and chief the verge, and decoder is my show, but big ideas and other problems time line is little differently. But today we're going elon muchas ald trump and tesla and I have to say, feels like the first of many episodes about that mix of ideas that will be doing over the course of the next four years.

You want efforts to get Donald trump l to president and twenty twenty four will go down in history is the ultimate money in politics story. Elan dup, hundreds of millions of dollars into the race, used his platform x to relentlessly promote trump, and promised to run a government efficiency commission that will radically reshape how amErica Operates if any of his ideas actually get put in to action. Since the election, mosque has been deep in the mix planning trumps second term.

He's reportedly spending time in mario go, weighing in on cabinet appointments and even hoped on the phone with world leaders like ukrainian president fautaua slinky. He also attended from the first post election meeting with house republicans in dc this week. Then on tuesday, trump announced that iran would coleen, the new department of government efficiency with former republican presidential candidate of that chroma swale? Yes, the acronym is dosh.

Yes, the efficiency initiative has redundant leadership. And to be clear, it's not even a real department or government agency. Only congress can create those.

But IT looks like elon's ambitions, to quote this mental federal bureaucracy with severe budget cuts and layoffs, have landed him a real advisory job in a direct line to trump. But there's one big problem looming over all of this elon's money comes from tesla. And in particular, tesla, enormously overvalued stocks Price.

Tesla is already the leading solar of evs america. But keep things going, you know, has to sell more electric cars and then also deliver on the promise of those cars becoming self driving robot taxi. The problem is that trump turned evs and the E. V. Transition into a political nightmare during the election, not to mention climate change of overall, which trump is resolutely denied.

So how is the CEO, an elective car company in an outspoken advocate for combating climate change, going to square his support for trump and a republican icy agenda centered on climate change denial can must convince trump to pump the brakes and gutting climate regulations in the E. V. transition? Or is he just looking to spare tesla as best he can and give IT an edge or the competition? Top three, this all out.

I invited verge transportation edit andy hawkins on the show to help makes sense of what could happen next. This could not be a more critical moment for the auto industry, which has been trying to transition to evs and taking in billions of dollars and incentives and funding from the by administration to speed up the process. The trump administration dead set on slowing evy adoption would would be a disaster, not just for tesla, but every other U S.

Automatic er grow in forms controversial tair plans. And well you have a political and economic mess of unprecedented proportions, one that could reshape the auto industry, and really every other industry in amErica for years to come. Leg, I said, I think where we talking on elan bus, Donald trumped and tesla, quite a lot on the show in the years to come. Here we go.

IT seems very obvious that the results of the election, Donald trump being the president once again, will have cata classical c effects on the auto industry. Whether you think the category sm is go to bad, very much depends on whether you are personally in on musk. So let's just start there.

I'll set the stage. Alan worked very hard to get trump elected. He was giving away money in pensylvania. Trump on elan is that morlock on phone calls with zoelen ski, vetting candidates for various government positions. What are we expecting you want to do here?

I don't think it's an overstatement to say that elon muscles, a pivotal figure in this in this election, he made a huge bet on on trumps reelection. He spent over one hundred nineteen million dollars to get him elected. That seemed like in the winning days, trump was really just outsource in his ground game to musin states like pennsylvania. Muk stands to benefit from from this Victory. So it's not an exaggeration that mask has got his hands on the delivery of power, and he is very much driving these decisions for this future administration.

Elan wasn't always a trump supporter. He wasn't always a conservative. He claims, he says, he said he voted for obama and clinton. And IT sounds like he voted for about and twenty twenty. Although who knows, he is often said he wish that he could just have a Normal person in this president, which is remarkable considering that he is sitting to, um, how did he get here?

Elon mak's definition of Normal is very different from probably yours in mind. He chafed at the covered blocks down restrictions. IT was very clear that he thought that the reaction to covered was was an overreaction. He was forcing his own workers and tesla to return to the factory, return to the office, get back to work, while much of the rest of the country in the world was at home and and not doing those things. That was, I think, as IT was for for many people in the space, was kind of a radical zing moment for him.

But then after biden was elected in twenty, twenty, there was this event that bite in held that the White house, where he was sort of one of the highlight electric vehicles as being sort of like a very key aspect of his limit agenda that he was going to push forward, invited all these odor makers to the White house to sort of talk about electric vehicles. And notably absent from that list of fox was yellow musk tesla bus claimed that he wasn't invited, clear that his his feelings were hurt by that. Obviously, because in many ways, the EV market in the us.

At that point, and still to the stay in a lot of ways, is tesla. Most of the vehicles that are electrical in this country, our tesla vehicles, I think he saw that is a really huge snow but I kind of turned him against biden and also subsequently the democrats um and then I kind of just went from there. Do we know why I didn't .

invite test to that event? The only explanation I ever heard that makes any sense that IT was for union automakers and tesla ze and the union aukland. Yeah, just that simple. I think I really kind .

of that simple that that biden really wanted to start out on a pro union foot in his administration. And tesla is notoriously anti union. Uaw has tried to organize at the company for many years and has failed.

Obviously, they have deep tize with ford and with G M and with atlantis. Um and teslas is kind of the outlier amongst U S. Made uh other auto makers as being the one that is um does non union. You can also kind of like look at his his twitter behavior um how that has progressed sed how he has gone sort of deeper deeper into far righting politics into into conspiracy h and then with the twitter eventually with the twitter purchase a turning that into X I think things were sort of already on on the path that they were, but IT obviously accelerated after that.

He's one right his man's and office. Trump is going to be the president. What does elon want out of the trump presidency?

guy? That's it's like hard to know where to begin with that and that there's obviously that a lot of things that he wants just from the federal government, regardless of who is in office.

I saw a lot of really interesting takes prior to the election that regardless of whoever won, whether IT was trumper or coming heroes, that elan was going to win no matter what, because of of the ways in which his various companies are entwined with the government. Space x is the biggest example of that. The department of defense is space sex is largest customer.

There's billions of billions of dollars um that the federal government peace to that company for the launching of various satellites to rocket developments through all of this sort of space exploration that NASA is engaged in very much realized on space ecs. Ah and I think you can see that as boeing is sort of on the decline in many ways um and having a lot of trouble around many issues involving its plains but also its its space business, that space ex is sort of as ascended and is captured during a lot of market share from that company. So ilan is is clearly hoping to maintain this uh relationship, this beneficial relationship, but also to grow IT and to see more uh taxpayer money funneled into his companies.

This makes sense to me when I comes to space x space access, the defense contractor. We live in amErica where in twenty twenty four, and unlike to defense contractor sitting next to the president elect, talking to the president of europe, okay, I I get IT like a Young punk rocker. This is how I thought IT worked anyway, right in the eighties and nineties.

Fine, the defense contractors are running the country. That's the military industrial complex. I get IT. I don't like IT.

I don't I don't feel like I have to like IT, but I IT feels familiar. There's there's something there's something cozy and regional about that. There's a foundation that you can build on. I don't understand what you want. Expect tesla to get out of this.

And tesla still most of his wealth, right? Tesla stock goes up after the election, which doesn't really make a lot of sense an evaluation and what evaluation is based on and iran's network goes up and then he is has leveraged to go to a bunch other. But it's unclear to me why the trump administration is gonna good for tesla. Went Donald trump s so relentless ously politicized evs. Overall.

I think it's a little bit more complex when you start talking about tesla because, yes, obviously, trump turned evs into a major talking point throughout the election that he was using to hit by ted and then comalco's afterwards. Uh, and I think it's clear he's going to stick to these positions that he says that he was going to take as soon as he was elected.

He's going to try to get rid of what he calls the EV Mandate that that can mean a lot of different things that were passed under the by administration. But IT seems like valentine ced purposes. He wants to make IT harder and or more expensive to buy an electric vehicle in the united states under his presidency. Which yes, would directly affect tesla, would directly affect the revenue that, that company brings in.

And I think you're going to see in the next weeks and months ahead, probably EV sales Spike considers because a lot of people are going to assume these incentives are going to go away and that people who are sitting on the fence and maybe considered in EV purchase, this might help push them towards that decision so that they can get some these incentives before they go away. And I think musk said this before, I think he sees some benefit. And what he wants tesla to become, that maybe what tesla is now, but what he thinks that is going to transform into in the future and A I company of robotics company on of his vehicle company, and he sees trust has been beneficial to that vision of tesla.

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We're back with verge translation. Enter andy hawkins discussing how tesla investors reacted to from presidential win and why wall street seems so convinced elon must will spare tesla from whatever damage the incoming administration might do to the E. V.

transition. Immediately after election, tesla stock Price jumped a lot. Trung ts like to test a stock Price jumps. Test a stock Price is very much based on elan's promises, not on deliveries of cars, so test, test market cap is vastly higher than G M. Afford, but I can order of medicine right after the election.

IT added so much about, you know, it's basically worth the combine next ten auto makers on the list. So IT added up in entire toyota's worth value after the selection.

So that's crazy, right? Toyota's businesses, they take steel and they turned IT into cars and they ship the cars. And that is very physical business.

Tesla market cap is a software market cap, right? It's we're going to use software to turn cars in the robot taxes, and they're going to drive themselves and that will lead into AI. And then we will have optimist bots and all that is dependent on amount of the AI offer development that no one can see.

The end of nothing about Donald trump being the president increases th Epace o f t hat d evelopment. You're still need to hire engineers are still need to do the work. The low resolution cameras in a tesla still need to be able to accomplish full self driving, which there's just a lot of double controversy about. Do you think the market is just rewarding the wrong things that now you will be able to do IT? Do you think that tesla has been constrained by the regulatory shackles and there are gonna turn on full cell driving because there will be no one to arrest them?

I mean, IT certainly seems the case that there will be less scrutton on elon musk business. One of the defining aspects of the by administration as there have been a number of investigations, I think at least twenty investigation into his various businesses, whether it's misleading claims about the autonomy that his vehicles are currently able to achieve or whether or not the people who are using the cars as they are today are safe.

They're been a number of recalls involving full self driving and autopilot under the national a highway traffic and safety administration. I think it's fair to assume that under a trump administration, all of that scrutiny essentially goes away. And if text IT can be more aggressive and how IT rules out, maybe what's consider to be some half baked technology that's not based on this sort of the right software and hardware stack that other companies seem to think is necessary in order to roll this technology out safely? If he can sort of assume that he can do this cheaply and with less scrutiny, there's no reason to assume that tesla can't maybe leap frog over some of the other companies in the space to achieve more success. Now at what expense that our lives, obviously, people who drive in these cars and who have to walk around and Operate around around the other cars, but that that sort of A A long term consideration and maybe not so much A A short term.

There's also the question of who is he going to sell the cars too. Right now we saw sell cars to fund almost everything, and EV have been incredibly politicized. The last time in the code, or the title of the episodes called lock batteries, because we had made a made evs wall like the trump s.

campaign. Tried very hard to insist that commonly hairs was onna force you to buy an evy the beach judges in to come to your house and take your pick up truck away. And republicans don't want to buy evs.

They think there's a Mandate. And then right next to that, because of from Victory, testers have now become criticized. The target market for a tesla, the liberal buyer who wants to avoid de climate change, is not going to buy a test anymore. You can see that being reflect to the market sells are down. How is that onna play out for this company?

I don't have a Christal ball. I can really say for certain as to ety of this, but I think IT still is unclear as to how trump is necessarily going to unwind the various things that bit did. What trump is going to essentially do as IT when he comes into office, as he's going to vandalize things, he's going to vandalised the federal government, he chop out a budget of a regulations that he doesn't like.

He's going to fire a bunch of people and he's going to change things to his ones like in now that said, I think it's extremely hard to take away something that people uh have grown to like and expect. And I think that he saw that in his first administration with the affordable and how difficult IT was for them to repeal obama care. IT may be the case this time around that they run into the same problem with the inflation reduction act and the federal incentives tax credits and also manufacturing ing credits that exists to incentivize the purchase of electrochemical.

That maybe a real tough cell for him, especially if you have to get in through a very narrow ly divided congress, right? There can be a lot of republicans in the senate and the house who um have benefit a lot from the investment that we're made under the I R A. There are factories that are being built up across the sun, built in places like georgia in kentucky, both swing and red lining states.

And I think it's going to take a lot to convince the elective officials from those places that this is something that's worth getting rid. Now that said, the epa regulations, he has a lot more sway over. He could just essentially cancel or roll back a tail pye emission rules that buy input in place that would essentially guarantee that around fifty percent or more vehicle sold by the year twenty thirty two would be electric.

He did that before when he rolled back obama's emissions standards at his first administration. I did. It's more likely that that's going to be something that's going to be a sort of a first older business under his administration. But the R, R, R, A stuff in the tax created and incentives less clear that that's going to be A, A, A successful position for to take on climate .

change feels like a big piece of this. Trump doesn't believe in IT. I must believe in climate change.

He has said he believes in climate change. He started tesla because he was a climate advocate. He is disagreed with trump on a climate change, at least on the the chronological scale of change.

So there's some disagreement inside the house. Sn, climate change. Is that going to be effective here? I think a lot of people are assuming that un. Must pushing for evs will somehow change the trumpet administration's climate approach.

Clearly, the people who have a vested interest in tesla success are certainly hoping that a must can push trump, can help convince him if he has his ear. Clearly, trump as enamored with musk, he thinks of him as a genius. And we've seen from the past that these types of relationships tend to, uh, in the trip world.

But that said, initially, things are going grape between the two of them, but it's IT is certainly possible that must can bring trump over to a less climate and tagish position. That said, we have to sort of take trump at his word. He pulled the the united states out of the paris agreement under his first administration.

He seems poised to do IT again the second time and that was what are the things that sort of drove a wedge between must can trump at the first time around was when um he called the U. S. I of the paris agreement must left some of the advisory panel. I believe that trumped set up amongst business leaders. So that was a moment in which they drifted apart.

So whether or not must can be influential and keeping trump focused on certain things that he wants to have done, and maybe steer him away from the more damaging aspects that could threaten the the climate and sort of like the position that the united states holds towards climate change, the future. It's gonna really tough for him because while musk sort of a uh, recent convert to the mega world, there is a lot more folks that also have trumps year from the oil and gas industry that have been funded in millions and millions of dollars into his various political campaigns. So musky certainly going to have a lot of .

competition in that respect. The other piece of this that seems very chAllenging, just from a tesla has to make an cell cars perspective, is china. China is a huge market for tesla.

They need to be competitive there. The chinese automakers are investing heavily in evs. The c ford just said that he's been testing out of his jmi EV and he wishes he could keep IT because it's so good. That's a lot. There's a lot there with china.

Trump signature economic policy is terrifying, which feels like if you impose sixty percent tariff s on chinese imports, maybe we don't have an auto industry because we don't make a lot of the core components here in the united states. And I will take a long time to ramp up the manufacturing. That's even possible. How do you think you on managers, all that.

I think what of the perhaps undercover red aspects of tesla is how vertically integrated the company is, but also how american made their their cars are. Tesla obviously has A A growing and crucial business in china. The vehicles that that makes here in amErica regularly win the top spots in these annual rankings.

About with who has the most american made car looking at like not only where the car is built in assemble, but all the parts that IT uses and the local employment and all these other things. And that's because the company lies on on a lot of U. S.

Made parts, but also because a electric vehicles as a whole are just a lot more simple to make than gas power vehicles. There's just a fewer components. It's just sort of a more simplified manufacturing process.

But that said, there's no such thing as one hundred percent american car, even tesla as parts our source from all over the place. And a trumpet has put these terrifying into place. I think that that is going to have negative effects for tesla, but also, I think, more acutely for the rest of the american auto a industry.

One of the reasons tesla is successful in this country is there are huge tariff and chinese VS right now. Chinese cars right now, they are not really available for sale in this country is not cost competitive and a way shape reform. Terrorist also make, I know, bmw more expensive. You would make G, M cars manufacturer in mexico more expensive potentially. Is this all just a net benefit to tesla c because it's set up to win this market?

That's a pretty smart to make. That said, I mean, it's very clear that, that the income in trump administration is a sort of net negative for the auto industry, especially the evie investment as a whole. I think I saw recently that global data cut its outlook for the um for E V market share in the U S.

By twenty thirties. They previously said that he was going to be about thirty three percent sales and saying that it's going to be twenty eight percent. Doesn't see about a huge shift right off the bat.

But the fact that this is before trump has even come in and started an acting in these policies is a pretty clear sign that people are expecting in there to be fewer EV sold overall as his administration takes hold. Author makers were already rolling back a lot of their investments, but I think that tesla is probably position to withstand these sort of market forces initially much Better then a lot of its competitors. Its company is more at scale.

It's it's more mature in terms of its uh its EV business because that is the sole business that, that is in. Um where's the rest? These companies, they're still too len up these factories.

They're making deals with battery manufacturer. They're still a sort of a lot of balls up in the air for these competitors. And I think that part of the combination of a less evy friendly federal policy plus the terra s is really going to just do the whole thing .

in the chaos we need. Second great break. We'll reback.

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We're back with large transportation in their andy hawkins discussing how the trumpet administration might benefit or hurt tesla in other american automatic ers. Before the break, I asked andy about from controversial Terry plan and how could slap even higher import fees and foreign mid cars. E, V makers like byd, and show me, basically can't sell their products in the U.

S. Right now due to insisting terrors. But those terrors could soon cause problems for domestic manufacturers like G, M, to build some cars in mexico.

So I wanted to know, what's the landscape in the autun industry right now and who's going to be able to weather the storm if in when trump's ghe terrors to arrive, it's over the legacy automatic ers. There wasn't really the outpouring of congratulations from G. M.

And foreign stantons and vw and whatever that we saw from the technology, right, tim cook and mark zuker gans in percha falling over themselves have basis. Everyone wants to congratulated trump immediately. I think they are worried about terrorists.

S, they are worried about AI regulation. They can see some opportunity for mselnet like the automated kers. They just watched their big competitor drive this guy in the way, ask, are they worried? Are they afraid?

I mean, still sell gas cars, if you're ford, maybe if one fifty cells, you're going to sky rocket. Are they looking at this as an opportunity? Or they worried what's divide.

There's probably some concern about how some of these bets that tape in making over the last year are going to evolve. But that said, I think what trump represents that in terms of, uh, federal policy towards emissions, towards incentives and subsidies, I think the legacy author makers are pretty well position to handle. And theyve already sort of been making a lot of decisions in the run up to the election to kind of push out the E.

V targets that they originally we're making when things were looking a lot more bullish back in twenty one and twenty two. Now we're already starting to see they're not convinced that evs are going to be as dominant of force as they already were because of the slowdown in sales, the infrastructure sort of the bundled infrastructure rollout of charging and the fact that customers were just not flocking to to the vehicles, especially those sort of like in the middle of the market because of the lack of availability of affordable block tions. Um so I think that in some respects, while china, uh really kind of cracked the code on G P VS and was able to sort of transform its entire industry, it's still kind of a slower pace here in america.

And I know that there is a lot of people out there who are sort of pushing the argument the U S. Is is is going to be left behind in this technological revolution that evs are not as fragile as you might think they are the future of the industry and that the us. Does not want to be sort of left in the dust is pretty strong argument to make.

It's a year. It's clear that despite who is in office and who's running things that gm informed in atlantis are still betting on h electrification as the future. I think it's just they've already convinced themselves it's going to take a lot longer than I think they originally said. And now with truth, it's possible that it's it's gonna even longer than than they thought previously.

So those are the legacy automatic ers, and they have big markets in europe, in china as well. So IT feels like they will be moving down the road and maybe we just have the gas car subsidize the transition for a long time. Then there's the startups to right the pure players, the rivals look, said there is a bunch of companies are doing well and then basically reveal that's how I look at that.

The category of companies, ribbin is still not profitable. IT has a long way to go, but it's it's not occurred. All the other companies are kind of struggling in various ways.

Are they gonna survive? Can you pull this out? If you're riving and you don't have tax subsidies, you don't have an american government that wants there to be another strong player in this market. What do they have to do?

An interesting thing that happened, I think, just like only about two weeks before the election, was this defined SUV brand called scout motors revealed its first two vehicles. And now they are are currently owned by vote wagon. But they were sort of one of the pioneers of like trucks and S U.

V back in the sixties, seventies. And they have been revived by also I another said there there will be an E V brand and that was sort of what everyone was Operating under the assumption. But then they they came out of these cars and they're actually hybrids, I would think surprised a lot of people.

I mean, they're specifically hybrids in this sort of the traditional sense, but they have these gas powered generators in them or an option to that are sort of considered to be ranged extenders, right? So that said, I thought that, that was a really interesting position for this company to take. And I think you could see some of these smaller players like river in like lucid and some others, a start to be more open minded about the possibility of hybrid than for a long time, theyve said.

Hybrid dds, there's no point the future is electric. That is an outdated technology. We don't want to be invested in that. And that could continue to be sort of the line that they stick to for the near term.

But I think in the long term, if you are any of these companies that sort of hanging by a thread, and obviously, all of them have rich benefactors in their corner, rivet has a deal of five billion dollars. Al, with full swagger. Lucy is closely tied to the sauces and of money that they have. But you know, that's not a guarantee for future success and long term survivability. So I think if if you are looking into the horizon as what is going to be this this new future that we have, I think IT would be a smart decision by all these companies to start to think more broadly about other technologies, range extending in hybrid, that they should be also investing in.

And that really brings us back to the the billion dollar question we started with what happens next nine weeks from the inauguration. You want to hanging out of moroccan, try to reshape the holy us. Government anyway, wants what's you are going to do.

I think there's like a lot of questions. What does must want out of all this? I think we've gone over some of those things that he could potentially want.

There was obviously talk about him joining the administration, heading up some sort of a due department around government efficiency, where he would just start laying waste to the bureaucracy and trying to cut two trillion dollars with the federal spending. Good luck to you. I would say in that endeavor, this is a seven trillion dollar government.

You know, if you're going to try to ask you over thirty percent of of the money that spent every year, that is could prove to be devastating. I think a lot of the things that people rely on for their daily lives, I don't put a lot of stock in the in the idea of musk just flat out joining the administration because that would require him divesting himself from all of his various companies. And IT doesn't seem like that something that he necessarily likes to do, he as his fingers in many different pots.

And I think he likes to keep IT that way. So IT seems likely that he will continue to be influential in this administration. Um he could potentially head up some sort of blue ribon panel or or whenever that trumps size to make.

But IT IT doesn't seem likely that he would actually become a cabinet member or some sort of senate confirmed position. That would be tough for me to imagine. But that said, I think he's going to be pushing his own people on trump. He's already been recommending, uh, several space executives for senior administration positions. So I think if he can be sure that he has trumps ear, his own people are in the government, uh, Carrying out his wishes and he has some sort of outside position where he can sort of continue to exert his influence while also still being the richest man in the world, and enriching himself through government contracts, through regulatory credits, through all these other things that he's producing over decades and decades, I don't see why he just wouldn't considered just continuing to do uh to to follow that path basically into the future.

So we ve got to end IT here. You got to giving your prediction over under number of months before trump and must .

have falling out what went to be over. That's what I would want to know. I mean, there are so like aligned and so many things, right, whether it's this culture war stuff for all these are the things I don't see the things that could drive the wedge like IT used to be there.

But now that mosque is just like turned himself into this dark mega personality, I would be really curious as to know because, yes, I think that there's like ample evidence that trump will cut him loose. But as he has everybody else in the past, but I don't know, man, this feels different. This feels different. This is a romance meant for the ages.

I'm saying .

one year feared of as soon as text sales .

start fAllen and he wants that tax credits to come back. I mean.

their sales have already been following under the current system of tax credits, right? Like they benefit from the tax credits, but their sales have been dropped over the past year because of more competition. So yeah, if trump s can lay waste e to the competition by a limited in a tax credit, I don't see why tesla sales actually might not boost or just at these stabilize. And then he can also continue to rip all the benefits from the regulatory credits that he sells to the companies who are not as zero mission as this. So I still don't think that even just a limited the credit that, that wouldn't enough, that wouldn't enough.

And I have to be something else. So you taken me over. I take the over. Thank you so much handy.

This is a great both pleasure fix me.

I like think anything for driving me on the coder and thank you for listings. Hope you enjoy that. If you have any thoughts of subsoil, you really just want to tell us what you're elon trump falling out over under us.

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