Plus, Nissan’s awful week continues to get worse as profits plummet and EV owners could be hit with a new $1,000 tax
jalopnik.com
Elon Musk plowed
millions of dollars into the campaign to elect Donald Trump as president of the United States, and
his investment is surely paying off. In the week of Trump’s election win,
shares in Musk’s companies went up and now he’s practically been given the keys of power to make sure his rivals have a tough time in the world of electric vehicles, space travel and whatever else Musk wants to try his hand at.
Musk’s money may have also influenced the purchasing power of the U.S. government, as the State Department released a procurement list that said it intended to purchase $400 million of armored Teslas over the next five years,
reports Business Insider. The list was quickly amended to say that the money would be spent on “armored EVs,” but with Musk parading around the Oval Office, will any other automakers get a look in:
The document on the State Department’s website has since been revised. The same line item now reads “Armored Electric Vehicles.” It is still listed as a five-year contract worth $400 million.
The latest version of the document does not mention Tesla.
“I’m pretty sure Tesla isn’t getting $400M. No one mentioned it to me, at least,” Musk wrote on X on Thursday about the department’s revised forecast.
The initial document had a timestamp of December 13, 2024. The revised document bears a timestamp of February 12, 2025, at 9:12 p.m.
Both the original and updated versions of the documents suggest that the contract will be awarded on September 30, which gives Tesla a little over six months to design,
develop and produce a bulletproof car.
The automaker’s lineup currently includes four cars and the electric Cybertruck pickup truck, which Musk previously claimed was bulletproof before its windows were smashed by a man throwing a ball. The truck’s
bulletproof credentials have also been tested by several of the truck’s owners, with disappointing results.
Spending $400 million on armored cars that don’t actually exist isn’t a great look for a government that’s pledged to cut unnecessary federal spending. To that end, Musk himself has been brought in as a “special government employee” to
gut departments like USAID and the U.S. Department of Education, as
Business Insider adds:
On Tuesday, Musk joined Trump at a press conference in the Oval Office, where he was asked about the potential conflicts of interest he could face from running DOGE and his companies simultaneously.
“No, because you have to look at the individual contract. First of all, I’m not the one filing the contract. It’s people at SpaceX or something will be putting for the contract,” Musk said.
“And I’d like to say if you see any contract where it was awarded to SpaceX and it wasn’t by far the best value for money for the taxpayer. Let me know, because everyone of them was,” he added.
There you go then, you have absolutely no reason to worry about Musk writing his own government contracts. Just like you have absolutely no reason to worry about
Musk writing his own pay check at Tesla.
favorite punching bag.. He attacks him & his wife regularly.. The tortoise never says nothing…
