Elon Musk's electric vehicle company, Tesla, faces a number of federal inquiries regarding safety issues with its partially automated vehicles. However, the incoming Trump administration, with Musk's support, could significantly impact these investigations and potentially weaken government oversight. The article explores how the administration's actions could benefit Tesla, considering its history of political influence and its close ties with the federal government.
Musk 's electric vehicle company faces a number of federal inquiries and could be impacted by changes in policy.On the potential chopping block: crash investigations into Tesla ’s partially automated vehicles; a Justice Department criminal probe examining whether Musk and Tesla have overstated their cars’ self-driving capabilities; and a government mandate to report crash data on vehicles using technology like Tesla ’s Autopilot.
As such, the temporal and fragile nature of the federal probes and safety programs make them easy targets for those seeking to weaken government oversight and upend long-established norms. Musk, Tesla’s billionaire CEO, has found himself in his newly influential position by enthusiastically backing Trump’s third bid for the White House. He was the largest donor to the campaign, plunging more than $270 million of his vast fortune into Trump’s political apparatus, most of it during the final months of the heated presidential race.
Tesla’s stock surged more than 60% by December. Since then, its stock price has dropped, but still remains 40% higher than it was before Trump's election.The White House did not respond to questions about how it would handle investigations and government oversight involving Tesla or other Musk companies. A spokesman for the transition team said last month that the White House would ensure that DOGE and “those involved with it are compliant with all legal guidelines and conflicts of interest.
“Take away the subsidies. It will only help Tesla,” Musk wrote in a post on X as he campaigned and raised money for Trump in July. Although most of the changes that Musk might seek for Tesla could unfold quickly, there is one long-term goal that could impact the autonomous vehicle industry for decades to come.
They say they worry that the company may otherwise never be held accountable for its failures, like the one that took the life of 22-year-old Naibel Benavides Leon.Florida Tesla also said the driver “was pressing the accelerator to maintain 60 mph," an action that effectively overrode Autopilot, which would have otherwise restricted the speed to 45 mph on the rural route, something Benavides Leon's attorney disputes.
Other federal agencies are also investigating Musk and Tesla, and all of those probes could be sidelined by Musk-friendly officials: —The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is asking a federal judge to force Tesla to enact reforms and pay compensatory and punitive damages and backpay to Black employees who say they were subjected to racist attacks. In a federal lawsuit, the agency has alleged that supervisors and other employees at Tesla’s plant in Fremont, California, routinely hurled racist insults at Black employees.
The federal agency that appears to have enjoyed the most success in changing Tesla’s behavior is NHTSA, an organization of about 750 staffers that has forced the company to hand over crash data and cooperate in its investigations and requested recalls. Michael Brooks, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety, a non-profit consumer advocacy group, said some investigations might continue under Trump, but a recall is less likely to happen if a defect is found.
Among the active NHTSA investigations, several are examining fundamental aspects of Tesla’s partially automated driving systems that were in use when dozens of crashes occurred. The agency said that in each collision, the vehicles were using the system that Tesla pushed out in a September software update that was “failing to detect posts or parked vehicles, resulting in a crash.” NHTSA also criticized Tesla for failing to notify the agency of those accidents.
Critics have said that Teslas don’t have proper sensors to be fully self-driving. Nearly all other companies working on autonomous vehicles use radar and laser sensors in addition to cameras to see better in the dark or in poor visibility conditions. Tesla, on the other hand, relies only on cameras to spot hazards.
Smith and other autonomous vehicle experts say Musk has felt pressure to provide Tesla shareholders with excuses for repeated delays in rolling out its futuristic cars. The financial stake is enormous, which Musk acknowledged during a 2022 interview. He said the development of a fully self-driving vehicle was “really the difference between Tesla being worth a lot of money and being worth basically zero.
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