The very conservative Detroit News is confused about Donald Trump’s plans for Electric Vehicle production in the US.
Republicans from presidential nominee Donald Trump on down are increasingly giving mixed messages about whether they want the United States to actually compete with China in the global auto industry.
The electrification of vehicles is here to stay, as evidenced by the 1.2 million all-electric vehicles — half of them American-made Teslas — sold in the U.S. in a 12-month period through May. China is a huge competitor in the EV market.
Trump’s presidential campaign visit Thursday in the Lansing area couldn’t have been a more curious place to bring his anti-EV, yet very pro-Tesla message.
If Trump’s motorcade took the only freeway from Capital Region International Airport on the north side of Lansing to Potterville, there’s no way he couldn’t have seen a massive $2.6 billion manufacturing plant being constructed along Interstate 69 in Delta Township.
That’s where General Motors Co. and a South Korean battery maker are jointly building a plant to assemble batteries for next-generation GM EVs. It sits right next door to the GM assembly plant where members of the United Auto Workers union assemble the profit-rich Chevy Traverse, an SUV getting a combined city-highway mileage of 23 miles per gallon that almost certainly will have an EV cousin in the future like GM has already done with its smaller Blazer and Equinox SUVs.
A few miles east of GM’s Delta Township complex, in the city of Lansing, GM is preparing to convert one of its oldest Cadillac factories along I-496 into an electric vehicle assembly plant for a still-unannounced product. GM has chosen this plant to assemble EVs for two practical business reasons: It’s physically close to the new battery plant and consumers aren’t buying Cadillac CT4 and CT5 sedans like they used to (GM already ceased production of the Chevy Camaro muscle car earlier this year).
All of this transition to electrification is backed by huge government subsidies — just like China does with its auto industry — so the Michigan-based domestic auto industry doesn’t move more production to Mexico or offshore.
In a 70-minute speech that was billed as an economic address but meandered into culture wars and other subjects, Trump didn’t say Thursday whether he would honor the Biden administration’s pledge of $500 million to GM to ensure the continued manufacturing of vehicles at the Lansing Grand River Assembly plant.
Yet, in recent weeks, Trump has been openly inviting Chinese automakers to construct assembly plants in the U.S. instead of Mexico and then turning around and saying he opposes plans by Chinese EV battery supplier Gotion’s U.S. subsidiary to build a battery parts plant here in Michigan.
The messages conflict. Does Trump want to compete with Chinese automakers and onshore manufacturing of new vehicles and their parts or doesn’t he?
- Trump promises stiff tariffs vs. China and Mexico, may nix federal funding behind U.S. EV plants
- Tens of thousands more U.S. auto jobs now vs. 2019, pre-COVID
- Anti-EV talk may be bluster, but the poison pill is whether it becomes part of MAGA platform
- First-term flashback: Coal lobbyist in charge of EPA, hobbled EV tax credit, mpg fines frozen
Former President Donald Trump once owned a Tesla Model S, and in the course of this year’s campaign has made plenty of disparaging comments about EVs at rallies in the run-up to the 2024 elections.
Yet he has a fan base inside the world of electric cars. Tesla CEO Elon Musk endorsed Trump for president in July. In turn, in August, Trump called Musk “a brilliant guy” and first said that he would consider naming him to an advisory role or cabinet job.
Trump’s first term corresponded with a time in which most U.S. and European automakers were pivoting from initial “compliance car” EV efforts to serious long-range EVs that cast a much wider net. Meanwhile many Chinese automakers were pivoting to EVs, and China made no secret about nurturing strong global automakers while building out a supporting clean-energy infrastructure.
Trump hasn’t had a well-defined platform—then or now—regarding clean energy, transportation, or the auto industry in the same way as President Joe Biden (or, by extension, Vice President and current presidential candidate Kamala Harris). Trump has insisted that there is a “much smaller market” for EVs and plug-in hybrids than what’s been projected, because of these vehicles’ cost and range. He’s been critical of legacy automakers pivoting to EVs—including sharp criticism of GM’s plan to go all-electric, with claims that going all-EV is “not going to work.”
There’s been no about-face to a clean-energy economy. In July, Trump reportedly asked oil and gas CEOs for a $1 billion campaign donation in exchange for scrapping EV policies, halting wind energy expansion, and derailing other clean-energy policies that the industry opposes.
The oil industry was reportedly not as excited about this as the campaign had anticipated. If Trump were seeing the industry as it were decades ago, he might have been startled to be reminded that today it’s complicated. Today’s diversified multinational energy companies have invested deeply in solar panels, energy storage, and charging networks, with wells and refineries and combustion only part of the business.
Donald Trump has for months denigrated electric vehicles, arguing their supporters should “rot in hell” and that assisting the nascent industry is “lunacy”. He now appears to have somewhat shifted his view thanks to the support of Elon Musk, the world’s richest person.
“I’m for electric cars, I have to be because Elon endorsed me very strongly,” Trump, the Republican nominee for US president, told supporters at a rally in Atlanta, Georgia, on Saturday.
The transactional nature of this relationship with Musk was made clear by the former president and convicted business fraudster, however. “So I have no choice,” said Trump, who then went on to say that electric vehicles were suitable for a “small slice” of the population and that “you want every type of car imaginable” to be available.
The only vehicle Trump drives is electric.
Can only kiss one ass at a time …