Tesla CEO Elon Musk met with Senior Advisors to President Joe Biden to discuss electric vehicle adoption in the US. The Senior Advisor, John Podesta, and Senior Advisor Mitch Landrieu talked with Musk on Friday in Washington. According to the Senior White House spokesperson, Posedta and Landrieu were discussing “shared goals around electrification” with Musk.
They discussed how recently passed legislature like the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law can contribute to growing electric vehicle adoption in the United States. The spokesperson also told Reuters that topics of discussion included broadening electric vehicle production, charging infrastructure, and “the broader cause of electrification.”
Interestingly, the White House announced last year that Tesla, the company Musk had led to catalyze the EV movement globally, was planning to manufacture new charging equipment that would ” enable non-Tesla EV drivers in North America to use Tesla Superchargers.” Late last week, it was revealed that Tesla was working on a potential design called a “Magic Dock” that would be utilized to enable non-Tesla EVs to charge using Superchargers across the U.S. Tesla has the most expansive EV charging network, with over 40,000 stations globally. However, it is only available to Tesla owners in the United States, and with the company utilizing a Pilot Program in Europe for the last year and a half, the automaker could be ready to open its charging infrastructure to other companies.
EV future
Relations have often seemed antagonistic between Biden, who has pushed for companies to use union labor, and Musk, who has pushed to keep unions out of his factories. Musk called Biden “a damp sock puppet in human form” last year after Biden highlighted EV production by GM and Ford in a tweet but left out Tesla.
Biden only publicly acknowledged the role of Tesla in U.S. electric vehicle manufacturing over a year after taking office, after Musk repeatedly complained about being ignored. In June, Biden compared Tesla unfavorably to Ford and sarcastically wished Musk “lots of luck” on his “trip to the moon” after the billionaire expressed reservations about the economy. Still, Musk has long-standing important relationships with the U.S. government, and those have continued under the Biden administration. Tesla has benefited from tax subsidies given to buyers of its electric vehicles while SpaceX, Musk’s rocket company, has contracts worth billions of dollars to deliver astronauts and cargo to and from the International Space Station and to build a moon lander.
