Elon Musk‘s mother and model Maye Musk termed President Joe Biden‘s decision to ignore Tesla Inc. TSLA and its billionaire CEO at an event in 2021 as the worst thing the administration did to the EV giant.
What Happened: At a 2021 EV summit, the Biden administration lauded General Motors for its efforts in electric vehicles while Tesla and its CEO were not invited despite GM delivering fewer EVs than Tesla.
“I think the worst thing that happened was when Biden did that event with General Motors as leading the way with electric vehicles…. and Tesla was ignored and Elon was ignored. I mean how dumb is that,” Maye Musk said in a conversation with Tesla enthusiasts on social media platform X on Sunday.
Musk was also upset about the decision to keep him out of the event, recounting it as recently as December last year.
"Let’s not forget the White House giving Tesla the cold shoulder, excluding us from the EV summit and crediting GM with “leading the electric car revolution” in the same quarter that they delivered 26 electric cars (not a typo) and Tesla delivered 300 thousand," he wrote in a post on Christmas eve.
He also alleged that the perceived "cold shoulder" towards Tesla by the Joe Biden administration stemmed from the influence of unions over the Democratic Party and the President. Tesla and its CEO are staunchly against unions.
“Biden is utterly controlled by the UAW. He would rather Tesla be dead than not unionized,” Musk said in July.
However, according to former Tesla executive Rohan Patel, the Biden administration treated Tesla fairly on certain issues despite "surface-level disappointment" between the President and the company CEO.
"No doubt Biden is very biased towards unions and appoints pro-Union people to the NLRB making it easier to organize. But it didn’t often create substantive problems, and instead was more of a PR and surface-level disappointment," Patel wrote on X in July while adding that it is just his personal view. Patel was Tesla’s vice president of global public policy and business development until April earlier this year.
Why It Matters: Three years after the EV summit which Maye Musk referenced, Tesla continues to be the leader in EV sales. In the last quarter, Tesla sold 166,923 EVs in the U.S., according to data from automotive research company Kelley Blue Book, while GM sold just 32,095 units.
GM, however, had the longest EV lineup among major U.S. EV players in the quarter with eight EV models. In comparison, Tesla’s current U.S. lineup has just five vehicles – Model 3, Model Y, Model S, Model X, and the Cybertruck.
Musk officially endorsed former President and Republican Donald Trump in July after a shooting incident at a rally in Pennsylvania. The billionaire also attended a Trump campaign event in Pennsylvania in October and termed the election a “must-win situation” for Trump.
Musk is actively gathering votes for Trump both online and offline. He founded a super PAC called America PAC to which he has so far given over $100 million in a bid to support Trump's presidential campaign, cementing him as a key figure in this year's Presidential election.
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Photos courtesy: Daniel Oberhaus via Flickr and David Lienemann via the White House
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