Trump says he has ‘no choice’ but to support electric vehicles because Elon Musk ‘endorsed me very strongly’

Elon Musk, center, meeting Donald Trump in the White House in 2017.

Former President Donald Trump said he had “no choice” but to support electric vehicles after Tesla CEO Elon Musk “endorsed” him.

Trump then went on to criticize the EV industry at length.

Musk has long been a champion of the pivot to electric vehicles. His company Tesla has largely led the way in developing the industry, which for a time made Musk a darling of the climate-conscious left.

But Musk has more recently embraced conservative politics, especially the issue of free speech. Musk bought Twitter in 2022, rebranded it to X, and has dismantled many of the checks and balances meant to limit hateful speech and misinformation on the platform.

Musk has publicly supported Trump since the assassination attempt last month. Musk, however, has denied reports that he pledged a $45 million donation to a pro-Trump super PAC.

At a rally in Georgia on Saturday, Trump told the crowd he supported electric cars but thought people should still have access to gas vehicles.

“I’m for electric cars. I have to be because, you know, Elon endorsed me very strongly,” Trump told the crowd. “So, I have no choice.”

He then clarified that he only supports them as a “small slice” of the larger auto industry.

“You want to have gas-propelled cars. You want to have hybrids. You want to have every kind of car,” he said.

Trump has repeatedly attacked the Biden administration’s EV regulations, including its plan to grow EV sales to half of all new vehicle sales by 2030.

While speaking at a bitcoin conference in July, Trump gave similar remarks when referencing President Joe Biden’s regulations, which also make it more difficult for gas-powered cars to meet Environmental Protection Agency standards.

“Not everybody has to have an electric car. I told him that,” Trump said, referencing Musk. “So we’re going to get rid of that mandate if you don’t mind. Some people want gasoline-propelled cars, some people want a hybrid, and some people like an electric car.”

Trump has also repeatedly criticized the cost of installing EV chargers nationwide. He erroneously claimed the government built eight chargers in the Midwest for $9 billion.

He’s given wildly inconsistent estimates for how much it would cost to install EV chargers nationwide. At the bitcoin conference, he said it would cost $12 trillion. At a North Carolina rally on July 24, he said it would cost $5 trillion. And at the Atlanta rally on Saturday, he said it would cost $9 trillion.

The bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 included $7.5 billion to help pay for thousands of EV chargers around the country, Politico reported.

The White House’s infrastructure tracking website shows that only 15 charging stations have been installed so far. Politico cited an analysis by the research firm Atlas Public Policy that shows the stations received an average of $770,000 each in federal funding.