Elon Musk couldn’t change Trump’s mind on electric vehicles

Elon Musk and President Donald Trump — two of the most powerful, outspoken billionaires in America — are still tangled up in a messy breakup over a variety of issues. It’s no shock that these two men with huge egos would have friction, but it’s interesting to look at some of the specific things that seem to be causing trouble between them.

In particular, Trump’s and Musk’s differing views on climate change and clean energy have evidently become an irritant again. Recall that Musk, CEO of the electric car company Tesla, participated in White House councils during Trump’s first term, but left after Trump began the process of pulling the US out of the Paris climate agreement.

But Musk began to drift to the political right. He publicly backed Trump’s campaign for a second term — onstage and with money — and was rewarded with a high-profile quasi-governmental post as the head of the new Department of Government Efficiency that laid off thousands of federal workers. It seemed like they were accomplishing their mutual goals. Trump even turned the White House into a sales lot for Tesla and got one himself.

But after Musk left DOGE recently, he came out against the budget bill passed by House Republicans and backed by Trump, driving another wedge between them. The bill rolls back tax credits for electric vehicles and hits owners with a $250 fee to pay for the Highway Trust Fund, which pays for road maintenance through gasoline taxes. Though Musk owns an electric vehicle company, he says he doesn’t care about rolling back EV tax credits and is more concerned about how the budget bill increases the deficit. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the bill would add $2.4 trillion to the deficit over 10 years.

However, Tesla made about one-third of its profits over the past decade from selling compliance credits to other carmakers in states that adopted California’s vehicle emissions rules as well as in several other countries. The Trump administration is also targeting the programs that created this line of business through executive orders.

The back-and-forth over the years between Trump and Musk was mirrored in the perceptions of Tesla’s products. The sleek electric cars were once rolling billboards projecting that their owners were concerned about climate change and are now attacked as endorsements of fascism.

More broadly, it shows that there are stubborn political divides on how people view clean technology — electric vehicles, renewable energy, battery storage, and so on.

A poll this week from the Pew Research Center showed that Republicans have less and less favorable views of clean tech. The exception is nuclear energy, which has seen increasing support among both Democrats and Republicans.

But on the flip side, Republicans tend to strongly support fossil fuel extraction from offshore oil drilling, hydraulic fracturing, and coal mining — far more than Democrats do.

Meanwhile, electric vehicles are taking to the road in greater numbers, though a partisan divide emerges here as well. Far more Democrats than Republicans say they are interested in buying an EV as their next car, though Democrats did look less favorably on Tesla EVs. Tesla sales are down in the US while overall EV sales are up. Hybrid cars are more popular across the country than pure EVs, according to the poll.

California and 11 other states now plan to end the sales of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035. Two-thirds of Americans say they are against this idea, but here, too, there’s a political divide, with 85 percent of Republicans and 45 percent of Democrats in opposition.

Looking back over the past five years, it’s apparent that even when Trump and Musk were in alignment, they couldn’t change the political valence of electric cars.

Now, at least one more Republican has soured on EVs: Trump is reportedly looking for a buyer for his red Tesla Model S after his dustup with Musk.

It will take more than a thumbs-up from the White House or the enthusiastic backing of a billionaire to change Republicans’ minds about technologies that help limit climate change. There are some outliers, though, like the Iowa Trump supporters who also back wind power.

But the momentum behind these tools is massive and mounting. Wind, solar, EVs, and grid batteries have all seen tremendous price drops, huge performance gains, and surging deployment in recent years. The Trump administration’s policies could sap some of this momentum, but they can’t stop it.