Could Elon Musk Get The US Government To Buy A Bunch Of Teslas?

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Last Updated on: 8th February 2025, 12:01 am

It’s no secret — Elon Musk has been something like a shadow president early on in Donald Trump’s second term in the White House. So far, that has largely focused on things not very related to Tesla. However, one has to wonder how much Tesla business might start getting rolled into White House business. Maybe….

Of course, there is not supposed to be any funny business going on between a wealthy businessman’s corporations and his role in the government when he takes on a government position, but, well … I almost started laughing there. Donald Trump is known to be extremely corrupt. There’s corruption running through the veins of his White House, as there was to an insane degree during his first term. Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, and Donald Trump walked away with billions of dollars of support from other countries during and after Trump’s last time in office. There were numerous other examples of nepotism and favoritism as well. And Trump’s approach to business has long been modeled after — and linked to — New York City mafia norms. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. You don’t, and I might just have someone come for your knees — or worse.

Musk may think he’s a fair and objective person, but he always assumes he and his businesses are unmatched across the board in their markets and deserve the world. It would just be “logical” that Tesla would win big contracts and get huge orders from the federal government. So, with Musk such a big part of Trump’s current team, on one hand, it would not be surprising at all if Tesla all of a sudden got some huge orders from the US government — for cars, EV chargers, and/or battery storage systems.

However … there are few potential dampeners for Elon Musk and Tesla here.

First of all, Musk has completely caved on numerous Tesla-related topics in the past year. He has claimed climate change isn’t such an extreme threat after all (insanely idiotic), claimed that we actually shouldn’t lower fossil fuel production, and claimed on multiple occasions that the EV industry shouldn’t be getting support from the government. Tesla very recently wiped old content off its website, including its mission, to accelerate the transition to sustainable energy. Elon Musk has made a U-turn on what built Tesla up to where it is today. (Good luck with that.) In the meantime, Trump hasn’t really budged or given an inch to EVs. He has said they’re not for everyone, and he hasn’t exactly given glowing praise to Tesla vehicles. In fact, at multiple times, he has derided the company. Who needs enemies when you’ve got friends like these?!

Reportedly, Trump finds Musk a bit annoying and very weird. There’s a chance — this is going to shock you — there’s a chance Trump used Musk for his popularity and money in order to get elected but is eager to dump him overboard once given the opportunity. There’s also newer reporting out that “Elon Musk is driving Trumpworld absolutely insane.” It seems a lot of other influential people around Trump are really eager to push Musk and his chaos crew into the nearest deep body of water. “Even the people closest to Donald Trump are suffering under Elon Musk’s sudden takeover of the executive branch, and they’re turning to an unexpected savior to intervene: White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles,” The New Republic prints. “In an interview with MSNBC’s Ali Vitali, Wired’s Jake Lahut revealed Friday that a slew of longtime Trump loyalists have turned to the so-called ‘ice maiden‘ to liberate the administration from Musk’s influence.” If Musk gets dumped in the Atlantic Ocean — or maybe more appropriately, the Arctic Ocean — it might not be so easy to convince Trump that the federal government should buy a bunch of Tesla vehicles. Or … maybe agreeing to buy a bunch of Teslas for some peace and quiet in the West Wing is the solution everyone wants. (Honestly, though, I think that’s an unlikely solution.)

Then there’s the matter of Hertz buying tens of thousands of Teslas only to turn around and ditch them. Hertz found that Tesla vehicles were involved in more accidents than usual, maintenance took too long and was too expensive, and the cars ate through tires. If Trump is already biased against EVs and anyone involved in procurement decisions for the federal government brought these matters up, it’s hard to imagine Trump greenlighting mass-scale EV procurement, even procurement of Teslas. It’s easy to see him using the opportunity to trash Tesla and Elon.

And that actually brings us to another element of the story. Donald wants to be #1, wants to be seen as the big boss, wants the world to revolve around him. Elon wants all the same things, and he often gets more public attention than Donald. This might start to really grate on Trump’s ego. It’s easy to imagine Trump becoming resentful of Musk and working to hinder and harm the weird geek rather than become buddy buddy with him.

We will see. One more thing that’s no secret is Tesla sales have been struggling lately. Tesla had a year-over-year sales decline in 2024, which was its first one since the Model S came out (in 2012). It appears that sales are already off to a rocky start in 2025. If things continue to go in the wrong direction for Tesla, and Musk gets desperate, you could very easily imagine him forcing federal procurements of Tesla vehicles — and coming up with rationalizations for why it totally made sense and wasn’t due to corruption or getting favors from Trump.

I don’t really know what I think, but forced to guess, my guess is that Musk doesn’t actually secure notable Tesla fleet purchases from the Trump admin. It doesn’t look like he has much interest in Tesla any more, and he doesn’t like to look desperate and admit he has made poor decisions. But who knows?… If things get bad at Tesla, all bets are off the table.

Any other thoughts on the question in the title and some of the points brought up here?