WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump, who’s buying a Tesla to show loyalty to company CEO Elon Musk, has had plenty to say about electric vehicles over the years. Most of it is not good.
Of course, Trump was once a sharp critic of Musk, too, which is especially notable given how tight the pair are now.
A look at some of Trump’s comments on EVs — and Musk:
Trump marked Christmas 2023 with a social media post lumping “All Electric Car Lunacy” in with a number of political enemies that he said “are looking to destroy our once great USA. MAY THEY ROT IN HELL.”
A few weeks earlier, during a rally in Ankeny, Iowa, Trump said of EVs: “They don’t go far. They cost a fortune.” He also suggested that the U.S. military was looking at making “Army tanks all electric” and scoffing, “you’re in the middle of the desert and you say, ‘You know what, we’re running low on electric. Do they have a charger around anywhere?’”
In November 2023, at a Claremont, New Hampshire, rally, Trump similarly picked up on distance being an electric vehicle issue: “You can’t get out of New Hampshire in an electric car.”
“Where are you going? ‘I’m going to Massachusetts.’ Well, you better get yourself a gas turbine because this car is not going to get you there,” he said. “Well, you could, if you stop about four times.”
That followed his joke during an event in Clive, Iowa, the previous month: “Electric cars are good if you have a towing company.”
Electric vehicles were an especially attractive Trump target during the six-week United Auto Workers strike in September 2023. That’s when he told a rally in Clinton Township, Michigan, “You go all electric so you can drive for 15 minutes before you have to get a charge.”
Trump, a Republican, also posted on his social media site that then-President Joe Biden