Donald Trump Criticizes Electric Vehicle Industry, This Is Elon Musk's Defense

JAKARTA - Former President Trump, a Republican candidate backed by Elon Musk, has criticized the Biden administration's electric vehicle policy and vowed to "end the electric vehicle mandate" if elected. However, Trump has not explained the plan in detail.

In this regard, Elon Musk, as reported by Reuters on July 24, stated that if Donald Trump, a candidate for president of the United States, removed support for electric vehicles, would harm other car manufacturers more than Tesla. This statement was made in a post-income conference call after Tesla reported its lowest profit margin in more than five years.

Musk said that while Trump's policy would hurt Tesla a little, in the long term this might actually benefit the Austin, Texas-based company.

"This is going to be a disaster for our competitors, and it will hurt Tesla a bit, but in the long term it might help Tesla," Musk said.

Musk stressed that Trump's removal of subsidies and its impact on Tesla's car sales is not very important because Tesla is an artificial intelligence company focused on self-driving technology.

"Tesla's overall value is autonomy. These other things are insignificant compared to autonomy," Musk said.

It is known that Musk announced his support for Trump shortly after the attempted assassination of the presidential candidate this month. In addition, Musk denied media reports that he promised to donate USD 45 million per month to Trump.

Musk's support for Trump caused confusion among Tesla fans who questioned how Trump's election would help the electric vehicle company. Musk also mentioned that Tesla had stopped plans to build factories in Mexico and would re-evaluate investments in the country's new gigafactory following the US presidential election.

"Trump said that he would impose a heavy tariff on vehicles produced in Mexico, so it doesn't make sense to invest in Mexico," he said.

Musk added that Tesla is significantly increasing its capacity in existing factories and plans to produce robotaxi at its plant in Texas.