Tesla is asking the Trump administration not to repeal EPA rules that allow automakers to sell more polluting vehicles despite the company’s CEO, Elon Musk, donating more than $200 million to Trump’s campaign, which clearly included repealing the EPA rules as part of its platform.
For years, Donald Trump has been spreading misinformation about electric vehicles.
Therefore, it wasn’t surprising when he made removing the federal EV tax credit and EPA rules that force automakers to produce more EVs a central part of his platform during the 2024 presidential campaign.
What was more surprising was to see Tesla CEO Elon Musk back Trump with more than $200 million in campaign financing and claiming that the then-former President was “right about everything.”
Musk has even proudly stood behind Trump has he was calling for the end of the “EV mandate.”
While the CEO publicly sided with Trump on removing the tax credit for EVs, he hasn’t commented on the EPA emission rules.
Now, Tesla is commenting and the company is urging the Trump administration to keep them.
Tesla wrote in a filing to the EPA:
As the recent assessment from the National Academy of Sciences makes clear, the proposal does not sufficiently evaluate the voluminous and rigorously established science, as well as the additionally developed scientific record since the 2009 endangerment finding that further solidifies the level of concern from climate change and the level of confidence that the established scientific community has over these findings.
The American automaker stated that the EPA has not made a sufficient argument based on legal or factual basis for reversing the vehicle emissions standards.
Electrek’s Take
Of course they haven’t, because there’s none. Allowing automakers to slow down the transition to zero-emission vehicle is going to be harful to Americans and the world. Period.
Tesla knows that, as it wrote in the filing, and its CEO too, but he appears to beleive that “white people reclaiming their nations” is more important than curbing climate change and air polution.
As for Tesla as a business, in the mid to long term, yes, it’s true that the removal of the tax credit might benefit Tesla. It won’t benefit Tesla’s mission as it will undeoutbedly slow down EV adoption in the US, but it will knock off some of Tesla’s competition in the US.
However, the EPA emission rules are detrimental to both Tesla’s mission and its business.
Hence why the company is speaking up on that. On the other hand, Musk is silent and just today made posts to back Trump’s authoritharian tendendices of using the justice system to go against political enemies.
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