Musk has long been a champion of the pivot to electric vehicles. His company Tesla has largely led the way in developing the industry, ironically making Musk a darling of the climate-conscious left.
But Musk has more recently embraced conservative politics. 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 but denied reports that he pledged a $45 million donation to a pro-Trump super PAC.
At a rally in Georgia on Saturday, Trump, who is 78 you know, told the crowd he supported electric cars but thought people should still have access to petrol vehicles.
"I'm for electric cars. I have to be because, you know, Elon endorsed me very strongly. So, I have no choice. 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.
"Not everybody has to have an electric car. I told [Musk] that. 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."
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.
A 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.
However, Trump may not have to be supporting EVs soon. The super PAC spearheaded by Tesla CEO Elon Musk supporting him is under investigation by the Michigan Secretary of State’s office for how it collects voter data.
America PAC is a new super PAC founded by tech industry donors, which was first formed in May and had raised $8.75 million as of the end of June, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
While FEC filings don’t yet show any donations by Musk to the PAC, the Telsa founder has publicly said he founded the PAC and plans to make “some donations” to it, though he denied initial reports suggesting he would contribute $45 million per month.
The PAC came under scrutiny after CNBC reported a link on the group’s website directing supporters to register to vote for the most part doesn’t do so, but rather just steals personal data.
CNBC discovered if a user lists a zip code in a battleground state, the website leads them to a detailed form asking for much more personal information than if they report being in a non-competitive state—in which case they still aren’t registered to vote, though, for some non-battleground state zip codes, the PAC does lead them to an official voter registration link.
A spokesperson for Benson said in a statement to multiple outlets Sunday that the Democratic state official is “reviewing [the PAC’s] activities to determine if there have been any violations of state law.”