Trump embraces Musk and his electric vehicles — but not Biden’s rules

Donald Trump’s embrace of electric vehicles since picking up Elon Musk’s endorsement isn’t reassuring the EV industry — and likely won’t stop Trump and other Republicans from trying to throttle President Joe Biden’s push for non-gasoline-powered cars and trucks.

Trump’s recent change in tone reflects a softening in rhetoric about EVs on the campaign trail, but is much in line with his positive comments about the vehicles during his presidency and his 2020 reelection bid. Republicans and EV industry officials say they would still expect Trump to gut Biden’s efforts to get more electric vehicles on U.S. roads, and to repeal tax incentives that the GOP nominee alleges benefit China.

The uncertainty about Trump’s potential electric vehicle policies goes to the heart of one of the biggest implications of his third bid for the White House: How much of Biden’s $1.6 trillion climate, energy and infrastructure agenda would he seek to reverse — including programs that stand to benefit GOP-friendly states and businesses.

After more than a year of denigrating Biden's EV policies as “lunacy” and calling for electric car supporters to " ROT IN HELL ," Trump told a rally in Atlanta this month that he’s for “a very small slice” of cars being electric.

“I have to be, you know, because Elon endorsed me very strongly,” Trump said.

Those comments came days after Musk — CEO of the U.S.’ top electric vehicle manufacturer, Tesla — endorsed Trump. In a conversation Monday evening on X, Musk’s social media platform, Trump told Musk he makes a “great product.”

“That doesn’t mean everybody should have an electric car, but these are minor details, but your product is incredible,” Trump said.

But EV industry experts said they doubt that Trump’s relationship with Musk would affect his promises to undo the Biden administration’s regulatory policies on EVs. Some also noted that Musk might benefit from a repeal of tax breaks that give a leg up to Tesla’s competitors.

Trump is “going to take a step back from making EVs a ‘punching bag,’” said Nick Nigro, founder of the EV analysis firm Atlas Public Policy. “But that doesn’t mean that he’s going to become a staunch advocate of EVs in the near term.”

The Trump campaign declined to comment for this story. Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.

The former president and GOP members of Congress characterize Biden’s EV push as the federal government limiting consumer choice and putting its thumb on the scale against gasoline-fueled vehicles. They also argue that policies such as a federal consumer tax credit in Democrats’ climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act — which can take $7,500 off the price of an EV — primarily benefit wealthy people and will hasten reliance on China, which dominates the supply chain for the minerals and ingredients that power the vehicles.

“I don’t think Trump being not anti-EV translates into protecting that incredibly vulnerable EV consumer credit,” said Emily Domenech, senior vice president at the lobbying firm Boundary Stone Partners who was a top energy policy adviser to former Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. “It is one of the very few areas of the IRA where you have general agreement it’s something we should go after. It is not an anti-EV thing. It’s an anti-China thing.”

Trump is also expected to continue to take aim at the Biden administration’s regulatory efforts to turbocharge adoption of electric vehicles by ratcheting down greenhouse gas emissions from cars, trucks and SUVs through stricter tailpipe rules imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency. This is despite the fact that Tesla was the only large automaker to urge EPA to strengthen the tailpipe rule from the agency’s original proposal.

The former president has exaggerated EPA’s limits on car and truck pollution — one of Biden’s most aggressive climate rules — as an “ EV mandate .”

EPA has estimated that under the strict emissions standards, 68 percent of new cars or light trucks sold in 2032 will be electric — surpassing Biden’s goal of 50 percent EV sales by the end of the decade. But the agency also says automakers can comply with the rule by building a combination of vehicles, including fully battery-powered ones, plug-in hybrids that rely on a mix of gasoline and electricity, and more efficient conventional engines.

Levi Tillemann, a former Energy Department official and author of the book “The Great Race: The Global Quest for the Car of the Future,” said Trump’s latest comments are not “particularly significant” to the EV industry given the policy positions he would likely take if he returned to the White House.

“Trump has been consistently against any regulatory effort to drive down emissions through electrification,” Tillemann said in an email.

EV industry officials and Republican advisers say Trump and a potential GOP-controlled Congress are less likely to seek to unwind the IRA’s domestic manufacturing incentives, which are intended to reduce dependence on China for clean energy and electric vehicle components. Those subsidies have spurred hundreds of announced manufacturing investments in green technologies — largely benefiting districts and states represented by GOP lawmakers who opposed the legislation.

“The investments in red districts — it's hard to deny the economic benefits happening there,” said Heather Reams, president of Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions, a group that advises Republicans on clean energy policy. “They are going to want to tout the benefits. The push for sourcing domestically and friend shoring is huge and will continue to be that way [under possible GOP control].”

Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.), chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Environment, Manufacturing, and Critical Materials subcommittee, said “we must find a balance between rolling back the worst portions of the IRA and ensuring that companies have the stability they need to continue investing in the United States,” including in the EV industry.

This isn’t the first time Trump has made positive comments about EVs during a presidential campaign. In September 2020, Trump invited EV manufacturer Lordstown Motors Corp. to bring its electric pickup to the White House as he sought to burnish his pitch on manufacturing jobs in the Midwest.

That same week, during his first debate with Biden, Trump said he’s “all for electric cars” and boasted that he’s “given big incentives” for consumers to buy EVs. But argued that “what they’ve done in California is just crazy.”

Tim Groeling, a professor of political communication at the University of California in Los Angeles, said Trump’s latest shift in EV rhetoric is nothing new for the former president.

“Trump has a tendency to do a ‘salesman’s patter’ of flattering, positive remarks about whomever he is negotiating with at a given moment (including foreign leaders),” Groeling said in an email. “It’s completely in character for him to do this while courting Musk.”

Groeling added that there’s a “big distinction between positive remarks about EVs or particular cars, vs. positive remarks about EV regulations or policies,” and Trump hasn’t indicated any shift in the latter.

Musk, for his part, has indicated he’d be fine with Trump removing the subsidies, saying on an earnings call last month that it would “have some impact” on his company but be “devastating for our competitors.”

Mike Murphy, a longtime GOP strategist who founded the EV Politics Project to boost Republican support for EV adoption, said Trump’s recent comments indicate his opinion on EVs may be malleable — and Musk may be the one person who can change his mind .

“Trump is not a hopeless cause for EVs,” Murphy said. “If Trump has proven one thing, it’s that he’s flexible — and Elon could be a force for good with Trump on EVs.”