Did Musk Back Trump To Save Tesla From Collapse?
Things could get dangerous.
It’s no secret that Tesla has backed itself into a corner. Musk has bet the entire company’s value and future on self-driving cars. Yet, Tesla’s FSD system is deeply flawed. It only uses a few cameras to “see” the world around the car, giving the system zero redundancy and a serious lack of spatial fidelity, making it wildly unsafe. As such, Tesla can’t pass the self-driving regulations, and their system is stuck as an incompetent driver assist system. But I think this might be why Musk backed the Trump campaign so vigorously, as it was his only viable route to escape this deadly dilemma.
Musk famously said that Tesla would be basically worth zero without self-driving cars. While this is certainly hyperbole, it is true that the reason Tesla’s stock is so overvalued is its perceived advantage in the self-driving race. I say “perceived,” as their Full Self Driving (FSD) system, which is meant to evolve into an autonomous system, is quite simply dangerous. Tesla’s publicly available data suggest that the current supervised FSD (which still has a human paying attention to the road) has a fatality per mile rate up to ten times the American average. This statistic is even more shocking when you realise that Teslas are safer in a crash than the average American car, suggesting that FSD is simply not fit for purpose.
The only reason that investors perceive Tesla as having an advantage is because of Musk’s manipulation. From publishing fake autonomous driving videos to withholding safety data, misleading marketing, and even wildly hyperbolic statements on autonomous driving from the man himself, there is a lot of communication coming from Tesla and Musk to suggest they already have autonomous vehicles, or are at the very least inches away from a major autonomous driving breakthrough. But in reality, their system is objectively dangerous and miles away from passing regulations. In fact, the NHTSA has recently warned Tesla that it needs to change its communications to ensure it aligns with the user manuals, which legally have to state that FSD is not an autonomous system and should be closely monitored; otherwise, they may have to take action against Tesla.
But this manipulation has run its course. Musk has been promising true self-driving cars for years now, and customers and buyers are getting fed up. This was clearly demonstrated when Tesla’s stock price crashed after their recent Robotaxi event. The message is evident: deliver self-driving properly, or people will abandon Tesla. After all, EVs are commonplace now, and other self-driving startups like Waymo are already running these services. Musk has to finally deliver, or Tesla, the source of most of his wealth, will effectively collapse.
But FSD, in its current guise, can’t pass regulations. It’s too unsafe and simply doesn’t have the redundancy systems required. Adding these redundancy systems, such as lidar, radar, ultrasonic sensors, and multiple AIs, will not only take years but billions of dollars to develop and deploy. This is simply not a feasible path for Tesla.
So, what does Musk do? Bring in Trump. Trump could rewrite the autonomous regulations and, thanks to his newfound immunity, face no consequences, even if these new regulations were too relaxed and people died.
With his immense wealth, Musk has bought his way into Trump’s inner circle by funding his campaign to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, spreading pro-Trump misinformation on X, and appearing to alter X’s algorithm to benefit Trump. In return, Trump has promised to give Musk a position in his government as head of a “government efficiency commission” and even let Musk wield influence over his policies.
So, could Musk influence Trump to lower the autonomous driving regulations in the US so that FSD can finally pass them and, in doing so, save Tesla?
It certainly seems that is on the cards. In fact, the NHTSA is worried that this will be the case. Their current probes into Tesla’s FSD won’t wrap up before Trump takes office, and they are worried that if regulations are changed, people could die as millions of Teslas could suddenly be updated and operated by unsafe autonomous systems.
Now, we have no way of proving this is why Musk backed Trump. The fact of the matter is that he has been going down his own alt-right radicalisation pipeline for a while now. Sadly, this isn’t uncommon for billionaires obsessed with hoarding ever more wealth.
But even if this does come to pass and a Trump administration tears down all the regulations standing in between Tesla and autonomous driving, it isn’t going to change the fact that FSD is a fundamentally flawed product. Do you think people are going to want to use a self-driving car that has a tendency to crash and kill them at shockingly high rates? Or do you think they will just opt to drive themselves, or better yet, buy a self-driving car that doesn’t have a homicidal streak? Musk can’t escape the shortcuts he has made with Tesla. And so, if he did back Trump to save Tesla, it is a wildly myopic decision.
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Sources: Neowin, AP, Planet Earth & Beyond, Bezinga, Will Lockett, Will Lockett, Fortune