As EV sales slump Elon Musk comes up Trumps
It was not that long ago that Elon Musk was globally viewed as a climate change hero, the man who, at the helm of Tesla, had almost single-handedly made electric cars sexy and scaled up production of the batteries that drive them.
For those achievements alone, Musk’s declaration last year that “as the leader of the company, I’ve done more for the environment than any single human on earth” was not entirely absurd.
Odd then that last month in conversation with Donald Trump on X, he was downplaying the threat.
Despite greater EV take-up globally, Tesla sales have slowed.Credit: Bloomberg via Getty Images
Trump burbled during that interview that global warming would create more ocean-front property, while Musk fretted that if the carbon content of the atmosphere kept rising, sometime in the future, people might begin to suffer headaches and nausea.
It was, wrote Bill McKibbon, one of the world’s best known writers on climate and the environment, “the dumbest climate conversation of all time.”
It was a remarkable moment because Elon Musk is clearly not a dumb man.
Musk has previously demonstrated a sophisticated grasp of the science and urgency of the climate challenge. He long understood that while EVs would be a crucial tool in decarbonising transport, the batteries that drive them would become central to the entire transition to a clean economy.
Driving EV sales up meant driving down battery prices, he realised.
“The overarching purpose of Tesla Motors (and the reason I am funding the company) is to help expedite the move from a mine-and-burn hydrocarbon economy towards a solar electric economy, which I believe to be the primary, but not exclusive, sustainable solution,”........
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