The Biden administration is very green and that is a good thing. Positioning the USA to be the leader in EVs is a top priority if you listen to the words of our top politicians - hooray for that.
Well, America already is the world leader in EVs because of Tesla.
And yet, this administration acts like GM and Ford are the only car companies in America that matter for EVs.
The White House and Congress give the junior underlings reporting up to Jim Farley (Ford) and Mary Barra (GM) a seat at all of the tables in government where EV initiatives are under discussion.
Elon Musk is NEVER included, let alone his underlings.
Why?
Before I explain "why," let me digress to talk about the batteries for EVs.
Huge efforts to work around the dependence on lithium are underway but despite the world's best efforts, nothing can out-perform the lithium-ion battery. We are building the whole vehicle-charging infrastructure around the assumption that these batteries are the linchpin for everything else coming in the EV world.
Nobody on this planet knows more about lithium-ion batteries than Elon Musk. Until something wildly unexpected is discovered, the future of EVs is directly connected to the world's supply of lithium. Mining companies are trying to extract more lithium every year but the future demand for EV batteries outpaces even the most ambitious predictions for how much more lithium can be mined annually. Lithium extracted from the earth is a choke-point for the growth of EVs.
Even so, the price of lithium is relatively stable. The reason that the price of lithium is stable is that the vast majority of the future supply is already contracted to be sold to two entities - China and Tesla. GM and Ford do not have any guaranteed access to lithium futures that even comes close to their projections for future EV sales. Hype won't sell EV pick-up trucks if they don't have batteries and there will be no batteries for companies that don't have lithium. The only reason that the USA is not hopelessly behind China for lithium futures contracts is because Elon Musk saw this fundamental limitation coming long before anybody else.
GM and Ford should be negotiating with the world's greatest builder of lithium-ion batteries as a 3rd party supplier for their future requirements. But hey, that would be Tesla. So instead, they are bragging about their decisions to build their own lithium-ion battery manufacturing plants - a skill that their companies have no experience with. It's an insane business decision but this is capitalism and CEOs should do what they want.
Our government has goals for EV sales in the USA and those goals depend on batteries and those batteries depend on lithium. Luckily, the USA has the most brilliant and forward-looking genius on the planet to advise on this challenge but Biden won't even mention his name. A man who is the ultimate immigrant story of coming to America and building the kind of company that makes America great does not even have a seat at the table with our Federal government.
Why? Our President and our members of Congress are deep in the pocket of unions and the mega-rich owners of car dealerships. The auto unions are the reason the Detroit became a wasteland and the car dealerships are a distribution model that made sense in the 1950’s.
Elon Musk understands why unions and car dealers are both huge bottlenecks if the USA is going to lead the world in EVs. China is not bothered by these ancient legacies. But, here in the USA, government is the ultimate version of organized crime and the unions and the mega-rich car dealers know exactly how to exploit the corruption in Congress and the weak, union-dependent Democratic party.
Musk is re-locating Tesla to Texas. If he was not such a great patriot, he would probably re-locate to Mexico. Hey, GM and Ford moved their manufacturing to Mexico and we never said boo.
If the USA doesn't even care about Musk's expertise when it comes to EVs, why should Musk care about the USA? More important, why would anybody think that China is not going to crush the USA when it comes to the future of EVs given that the USA does not even tap into its best and brightest leader in this industry?
Brilliant! JMcL
I am so very happy to see “ What Mark is saying, Again! I have missed you horribly!