Elon Musk Doubles Down on Trump: Should It Matter to the EV & Battery Industry?Elon Musk Doubles Down on Trump: Should It Matter to the EV & Battery Industry?
The Tesla CEO will give $1M each day to random petition signers—but in a way that’s legally problematic. Do his political actions affect Tesla and the EV industry?

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has a big week ahead of him: The EV company’s Q3 earnings call is scheduled for Wednesday and, according to Seeking Alpha reporting, analysts anticipate a 9% fall in profits in spite of an expected topline growth of roughly 10%. Tesla delivered 462,890 electric vehicles in Q3, falling short of the consensus estimate of 463,897 though an increase from the previous quarter's 443,956 vehicles and 435,059 vehicles in Q3 of last year. How investors will respond to the mixed news is presumably on the busy CEO’s mind.
Also pertinent: as we reported, Tesla’s promised spotlight on Cybercab (or Robotaxi; the company uses both names) at the October 10 WE Robot event was a disappointing PR exercise that was short on technical and timetables specifics about the long-awaited autonomous EV.

Rendering of Tesla's Robotaxi TESLA
Meanwhile, last week ended with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) acknowledging its probe into Tesla’s Full Self-Driving systems (FSD) following an incident in which a Tesla using FSD struck and killed a pedestrian.
But as all of this is unfolding, Tesla seems far from Elon Musk’s attention. Instead, he is making news in other ways.
Musk on the Trump campaign trail
Instead, Mr. Musk is actively courting GOP votes for GOP nominee Donald Trump and using his personal fortune to do so. He has already given more than $75 million to his pro-Trump political action committee (PAC), America Pac.
On Saturday, Musk went further, stating that, a political action committee aligned with Donald Trump, will donate $1 million each day until the presidential election to individuals who sign a petition aimed at encouraging Republicans in key battleground states to register to vote.
“We are going to be awarding $1m randomly to people who have signed the petition,” Musk was quoted by The Guardian as saying at a town hall event in swing-state Pennsylvania. “One of the challenges we’re having is how do we get the public to know about this petition because the legacy media won’t report on it. […] So every day between now and the election we will be awarding $1m, starting tonight.” He then presented a giant-sized check to the first winner of the prize draw.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk endorses Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Butler, PA on October 5, 2024. KEVIN DIETSCH/GETTY IMAGES
The petition seems to be designed to get Trump voters to register to vote in the November election so that they can sign it and get a shot at $1 million.
However, as CNN and other news outlets point out, it is against Federal law, and punishable by up to five years in prison for anyone who “pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote or for voting.”
CNN quotes David Becker, a former Justice Department official handling voting rights cases and founder of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research as saying, “This isn’t a particularly close case — this is exactly what the statute was designed to criminalize.”
Last Thursday, Musk went as far as reviving the conspiracy theory that Dominion voting machines were somehow involved in Trump’s 2020 election loss—a claim that cost Fox News $787 million in a defamation settlement with Dominion last year.
Should Musk’s personal politics matter to the EV & battery industry?
So, while Tesla investors might hope that the company CEO is focusing on the challenges the company is facing in 2024, Musk is on the campaign trail in Pennsylvania, stirring up controversy and skirting Federal law.
The question is, should this personal behavior matter at all to the EV and battery industry? Or, as loud as it has been, is it all completely irrelevant to the business community? After all, Musk is the richest man in the world and surely can spend his time and fortune as he likes, right?
On the other hand, couldn’t a popular backlash affect the company’s bottom line by alienating potential customers and investors?
The face of a company—and an industry
And there are larger issues:
The EV industry is still a nascent business—and one that continues to face challenges in convincing ICE vehicle drivers to go electric. That inability to close the sale has been a defining issue of 2024 as EV adoption has slowed its pace.
Tesla is the most well-known EV maker in North America and arguably, outside of China, across the world as well. If a ‘Jeopardy’ game-show contestant was told to name an EV company, the odds are high that Tesla would be the first to come to mind.
And the face of Tesla, the most well-known cheerleader not only for Tesla but EVs and electrification in general on this continent, has been one man: Elon Musk. He’s not only a CEO; in public he’s had a Steve Jobs-like role—one he clearly relishes—of representing not only a company but the future of technology.
Given all of this, one can argue that not only Tesla investors, but the entire EV industry has a stake in how Musk presents himself on the world stage. Or at least some reason to be concerned.
So again, in good faith, I ask two questions: Does the Tesla CEO’s personal behavior outside the company boardroom matter to his customers and investors? And, should it matter to them—and to rest of the industry, at least in North America? Feel free to let me know your thoughts by email or LinkedIn.
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