Elon Musk, in typical Elon Musk fashion, railed against federal spending on electric vehicles during Monday's Wall Street Journal CEO Council Summit. He also called CEO a "made-up title" and said that no one should be CEO forever.
Congress included $7.5 billion in funding for half a million new electric vehicle chargers in the recently signed infrastructure bill. On Monday, Musk said he wishes that funding wasn't part of the bill, calling support for the charging networks "unnecessary."
He also urged Congress not to include further subsidies in the Build Back Better bill, which recently passed the House and may soon be taken up in the Senate. "Do we need support for gas stations? No," he said. "I would delete it. Delete."
"If this bill happened or didn't happen, we don't think about it at all really [at Tesla]. It might be better if this bill doesn't pass ... the federal budget deficit is insane," he added. "I would just can the whole bill. Don't pass it. That's my recommendation."
In language that cannot be misinterpreted, he said he thinks that the federal government should "get rid of all subsidies," and that "if we don't cut government spending, something really bad is going to happen."
Tesla and SpaceX, it should be noted, have received billions of dollars in government support.
Musk sidestepped questions about how long he'll be head of Tesla and SpaceX, calling the title of CEO itself "a made-up title" and adding that there are only three titles that "mean anything" at a corporation: president, secretary and treasurer. "All these other titles are made up. CEO's a made-up title," he said to a roomful of CEOs who laughed at the comment. He made news earlier this year when he changed his title to "Technoking of Tesla," made official in an SEC filing.
Musk ended the conversation with a nod to the SpaceX Starship rocket, which he said absorbs more of his mental focus than anything else he's working on, adding that it is the key to whether humanity becomes a multiplanetary species.
Climate TRACE's data show emissions at the facility-level.Image: Climate TRACE