Could Musk's Trumpian turn help California's car rules?

Tesla CEO Elon Musk may have influenced former President Donald Trump to soften his rhetoric against electric vehicles, but backers of California's strict EV regulations aren't counting on him to take it any further.

Trump endorsed electric vehicles in his Monday night interview with Musk as strongly as he ever has. "Your cars don't require too much gasoline," he told Musk. "You do make a great product ... That doesn't mean everybody should have an electric car, but these are minor details, but your product is incredible."

But former California regulators and auto industry analysts aren't banking on Musk, who built Tesla into the world's most valuable automaker with the help of California subsidies, helping to soften Trump’s attacks on California's nation-leading EV policies.

“Do I believe for a second this will result in Donald Trump supporting EVs? No,” said Craig Segall, a former deputy executive officer at the California Air Resources Board who now serves as vice president of the environmental group Evergreen Action, after Trump said last week that he has to be for electric cars, “because Elon endorsed me very strongly."

Trump’s campaign, meanwhile, shows no signs of backing down on its promise to undermine state and federal emissions rules. When asked whether Musk’s support has pushed Trump to reconsider his plan to revoke California’s clean cars waiver and undo the Biden administration’s federal emissions standards, the campaign responded Monday with a statement from Republican National Committee spokesperson Anna Kelly blasting EV mandates.

“California Kamala Harris and Tim Walz' elitist obsession with electric vehicle mandates will punish the American auto industry while strengthening Communist China’s market,” she said. “President Trump believes in putting America First by supporting our auto industry and giving Americans the choice to buy the car they want.”

Others do expect Musk to give California a boost in defending its policies against Trump, who has vowed to block California’s special permission to implement its stricter-than-federal clean air rules, including its ban on selling new gas-powered cars after 2035, if he becomes president.

"Elon has his business interests that he's going to definitely support. So one would imagine he would definitely want to keep the waiver," said Dan Sperling, a former CARB board member who directs the Institute for Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis.

Tesla’s rise, as California Gov. Gavin Newsom likes to point out , is inseparably entwined with California's climate policies.

From its days as a startup in the early 2000s, Tesla was able to take advantage of California’s clean car incentives that allowed companies to earn credits for selling zero-emissions vehicles, amassing over $2.5 billion selling credits to other automakers that were slow to enter the EV market.

And the company has a history of standing up for California’s rules. When Trump first tried to revoke California’s waiver under the Clean Air Act to implement its stricter-than-federal tailpipe emissions rules in 2019, Tesla filed comments in support and “was generally on the right side of those court cases,” according to Segall.

But Musk’s backing of aggressive EV rules and incentives was marked by self-interest. As the state wrote tailpipe rules for later model years, the tech scion clashed with regulators in pushing standards that were so aggressive, hardly any other company besides Tesla would have been able to meet them.

“Tesla's arguing for more rigor isn't necessarily more net reductions,” said Segall. “They're arguing for the chance to basically be the marketer of ZEV credits.”

Sperling said Musk even barred his engineering students from visiting the Tesla factory around 2014 in protest of CARB's decision to issue weaker standards. “He actually banished anyone from UC Davis and any of my grad students from coming to the Tesla factory,” Sperling said. “That's how petty he was.”

Tesla also squabbled with regulators when they sought to limit EV rebates to companies that abide by “fair and responsible” labor practices, which he said would disadvantage his Fremont factory. And the political gulf between Musk and California Democrats has only grown. Last month, he again threatened to move his other companies’ headquarters, this time SpaceX and X, from California to Texas in protest of new state protections for transgender students in schools.

Segall cited Tesla’s declining share of EV sales and Musk’s expanding business interests as reasons he can’t be counted on to defend the state’s policy as he once did.

“His company did indeed stand up for EV regulations in the past because it profited from them,” said Segall. “I've already seen him starting to pivot, looking for the next major bit of economic value. He now talks about Tesla as a robot car company, an AV company.”

Tesla representatives didn't respond to a request for comment, while CARB declined to comment.

Auto industry analysts are also skeptical that Trump’s softened language on EVs will result in a real policy shift or prevent him from going after federal EV credits, which Musk has indicated he’d be fine with gutting.

Trump is “going to take a step back from making EVs a punching bag,” said Nick Nigro, founder of 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.”

James Bikales and Josh Siegel contributed to this report.

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