Elon Musk took the stage Thursday night to show us what it would look like if a Volkswagen XL1 knocked up a Model 3, and Texas forced Tesla to keep the baby. If you completely lacked any critical thinking skills or grounding in reality, the event probably sounded like an autonomous future is finally at our doorstep. Musk is going to need political support to get these things on the road, though, and from the sound of it, his Dear Leader isn’t exactly on board.
Speaking to a less-than-enthusiastic crowd in Detroit also on Thursday, Trump stuck to his greatest strategy — stringing together words that may sort of almost complete a sentence but never come close to forming anything approaching a coherent thought. And yet, Trump hit on something a lot of us might actually agree with.
“Do you like autonomous? Does anybody like an autonomous vehicle?” Exactly, Donald. Tesla and Silicon Valley are so focused on trying to make autonomous cars a reality, but have they ever stepped back to consider whether or not people are going to want autonomous vehicles? This is, of course, Trump we’re talking about, so he just kept rambling and never really went anywhere with this particular talking point.
While the point may not be clear what is clear is that Trump and Musk probably aren’t as united as Musk would like it to appear. Considering Trump felt he had “no choice” but to completely flip to supporting EVs due to Musk’s support after a political career of deriding the technology, that may not be much of a surprise. But Musk went full Trump surrogate just last week, jumping around on stage at a Trump rally like he thought he was a jester paid to entertain the crowd. Such antics most likely won’t really move the needle with Trump.