It resembled a sales pitch for Musk’s company, the country’s biggest seller of EVs. Tesla has lost more than half of its value since December as sales have plummeted worldwide. With Musk dismantling parts of the federal government as the head of the new Department of Government Efficiency, aka DOGE, the vehicles have become a toxic symbol for Democrats, a large portion of Tesla owners. Over the past week, protesters have vandalized Tesla dealerships, set Cybertrucks aflame and boycotted the brand. Liberal Tesla drivers have slapped stickers on their cars that read “I bought this before Elon went crazy.”

The strong feelings surrounding Musk have already started to scramble the politics around EVs. Trump’s exhibition at the White House on Tuesday was a defence of Musk, who he said had been unfairly penalized for “finding all sorts of terrible things that have taken place against our country.” Yet the bizarre scene of Trump showcasing a vehicle that runs on electricity instead of gas felt almost like a sketch from Saturday Night Live, and not just because the Trump administration has been trying to reverse Biden-era rules that would have sped up the adoption of low-emission vehicles. Here were the two biggest characters in MAGA politics promoting a technology that’s been largely rejected by their right-wing base.

Other prominent Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson and Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, quickly moved to defend Tesla against vandalism that Trump is labelling “domestic terrorism.” Tesla’s sudden shift from Democratic status symbol to Republican icon has some thinking the controversy around Musk could lead to a bipartisan embrace of EVs.

“He’s uniquely positioned to and has the power to really shape this debate and help bridge the divide here,” said Joe Sacks, executive director of the American EV Jobs Alliance, a non-profit trying to prevent “silly partisan politics” from stopping a manufacturing boom for electric vehicles. “I’m unsure if that’s what he’s going to use his new perch and his role in the administration to do, but it seems like he has the ability to do that.”

According to polling the alliance conducted after the November election, Republicans have warmed up to Musk, with 82% of those polled saying that Musk is a good ambassador for EVs. A solid majority of Trump voters – 64% – said they viewed Tesla favourably, compared with 41% of those who voted for Kamala Harris. “Republicans are probably inching towards the idea that there shouldn’t be much of a cultural divide on this product category, if the market leader CEO is sitting next to President Trump in the Oval Office during press conferences,” Sacks said.

The data aligns with a recent analysis from the financial services firm Stifel, which found that Tesla has become more favourable among Republicans as its popularity plunges with Democrats. Compared to August, 13% more Republicans are willing to consider purchasing a Tesla.

Yet there are reasons to suspect that EVs will continue to be a hard sell for Republicans. They are typically tradition-minded people who like big cars, not small cars with new technology they’ve never used before, said Marc Hetherington, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and co-author of the book Prius or Pickup? “Conservatives don’t have the sensibility that fits with electric vehicles at all,” he said. “So I don’t think that you’re going to see a spike in Tesla sales among conservatives.”

Alexander Edwards, president of the research consultancy Strategic Vision, said that Republicans view gas-powered cars as a more practical purchase for transporting their families from place to place. That’s based on his firm’s surveys, which examine the psychology behind the car choices of about a quarter-million Americans a year. “I think Elon made a bet that I think he’s secretly regretting, that Republicans would come out of the woodwork and say, ‘Yes, we’re going to support you,’” Edwards said.

If they came around to any electric vehicle, however, it might be a Tesla. One of the primary things Republicans care about when it comes to buying a car is that it looks fast and goes fast, and Tesla has seen more Republican buyers for that reason, Edwards said. Democrats have consistently been buying electric vehicles at a rate of four to one compared to Republicans, but two to one when it comes to Teslas, according to Edwards’s data. Last year, more Republicans than Democrats bought Teslas for the first time – not because more Republican flocked to the brand, but because Democrats pulled away from it.

For Democrats, who had long been criticized as having a smug attitude for driving a Prius, Teslas offered a cool and desirable alternative with less baggage when they took off in the early 2010s. “Tesla was able to finally give Democratic buyers what they were looking for – a Prius-like image of being thoughtful, combined with the fun and excitement of a real luxury sports car,” Edwards said. That started to change as Musk became a magnet for political controversy, starting with his takeover of Twitter in 2022. A Tesla EV became a symbol of Tesla’s CEO.

“Doesn’t matter if you’re Republican or Democrat – when you jump into the Batmobile, you become Batman,” Edwards said. “And the same thing is true with the vehicles we purchase. We often want them to show who we are, what we’ve accomplished, what we stand for.”

Of course, there are ways to depolarize electric vehicles that don’t rely on cues from Trump or Musk. Sacks recommends talking about the attributes of electric vehicles: their ability to accelerate faster and brake more crisply, as well as help people save money for every mile they drive, since there’s no need to buy gas. When people have friends or family who own an EV, that also helps break down the cultural divide, he said.

In a way, you could see Trump becoming a salesman for electric vehicles as an example of that very phenomenon, with his self-described “first buddy” convincing him to come around. Just two years ago, Trump complained that EVs needed a charge every 15 minutes and would kill American jobs. But, after Musk endorsed his presidential campaign last summer and donated $288 million, Trump softened his tone, saying that he was in favour of “a very small slice” of cars being electric. “I have to be, you know,” Trump said, “because Elon endorsed me very strongly.”

On Tuesday, as Trump climbed into his new electric car for the first time, he seemed surprised by what he saw there. “That’s beautiful,” he said, admiring the dashboard. “This is a different panel than I’ve had. Everything’s computer!”

This article originally appeared in Grist. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style. Grist is a non-profit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at grist.org.

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It feels almost fashionable to bash responsible investing these days. 

Most of the criticism targets the acronym “ESG,” which stands for “environmental, social and governance.” ESG is used alongside traditional financial analysis to account for previously ignored “externalities” such as carbon emissions, boardroom diversity and employee satisfaction. Unfortunately, some circles erroneously refer to ESG as some sort of “woke” form of investing that pushes a “socialist agenda” into capital markets.

These misguided attacks are increasingly coming from people in high places. Elon Musk recently tweeted that “ESG is a scam” after Tesla got removed from a major ESG index for a lack of disclosure around key environmental and social issues and allegations of racism on the factory floor. Noted venture capitalist and PayPal founder Peter Thiel said in an April speech that “ESG is a hate factory” and equated it to the Chinese Communist Party. Even former U.S. vice-president Mike Pence joined the attack, saying “liberal activist investors are forcing private companies to abide by ESG investing principles, elevating left-wing environmental, social, and corporate governance goals over the interests of the business.”

Most of these hit jobs seem intended to score political points with a specific audience. Musk’s comments align closely with his recent embrace of right-wing politics. Thiel’s speech was made at a Bitcoin conference where attendees must have been upset about cryptocurrencies coming under fire for their heavy carbon footprint. Pence was speaking at an oil and gas conference where executives are being asked tough questions by investors looking to decarbonize their portfolios. Investors in unsustainable assets are feeling the heat, so we shouldn’t be surprised that they would fight back with anger against a movement that makes them accountable for the pollution they are generating.

But it’s not all broad-brushstroke political attacks. I’m seeing more nuanced critiques from industry insiders. Tariq Fancy, former BlackRock chief investment officer for sustainable investing, in a recent TEDx talk called fossil fuel divestment a placebo, equating it to giving wheatgrass juice to a cancer patient. Stuart Kirk was suspended from his job as head of responsible investing at HSBC after dismissing climate risk at a conference and telling us what he really thinks: “Who cares if Miami is six metres underwater in 100 years? Amsterdam has been six metres underwater for ages and that’s a really nice place.”

These comments have understandably caused quite a stir. They show that many large financial firms are just paying lip service to sustainable investing, and we shouldn’t kid ourselves to think that they are in it to change the world. Profit maximization is still the end goal, so sustainable investors need to expect greenwashing and do their homework before buying in.

These comments also show that there is a massive skills gap in the sustainable investment industry. Fancy and Kirk have no background in environmental studies, systems thinking or sustainability, and it shows. We are fooling ourselves if we think that a profit-first worldview will help us solve sustainability challenges. Fancy and Kirk have done a great job calling out problems in the responsible investment industry, but they offer little in the way of solutions.

Are these critiques a good excuse to dismiss all responsible investment funds and companies? Of course not. If anything, the political attacks show that we’re on the right track – we’ve got their attention. The more nuanced critiques are an opportunity for us in the responsible industry to step up our game, and fight back. We need better communication and explanation of what ESG is and what it isn’t. We need rigorous academic research to back up our claims. We need to be leaders in disclosure and transparency, opening up the curtain for anyone who asks. And we need change-makers and social innovators to learn finance so that we have people with the right worldview in positions of power at our large financial institutions.

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A few days later, the Supreme Court announced that it would hear a case during its fall term that could very well determine whether Tesla’s technology gamble succeeds or fails. Justices heard arguments on October 14 addressing questions having to do with federal jurisdiction over the fast-changing electricity business.

At issue is an obscure federal policy known in the dry language of the electricity business as “Order 745,” which a lower court vacated last year.

Order 745 allowed electricity customers to be paid for reducing electricity usage from the grid – a practice known as “demand response.” It also stipulated that demand response customers would be paid the market price for not using the grid – like the power industry’s version of paying farmers not to grow corn.

Paying people not to use electricity may sound preposterous – one critique of Order 745 was that it permitted overly generous prices and lax performance standards, basically making demand response a license for electricity consumers to print money.

But research, including some of my own, has shown that demand response can make markets operate more efficiently, temper the market power held by power generating companies and reduce the risk of blackouts.

In other words, as long as the prices and rules are right, paying people to use less electricity isn’t such a crazy idea. Indeed, it’s just one way that new technologies, including rooftop solar and batteries, could make the grid cleaner and lower prices.

Smart grid on trial

The Order 745 case has already proven to be a major disruption in the US electricity market. It has thrown uncertainty into business models, market prices, and in some cases even the planning of the power grid to ensure reliability in the coming years.

The case, however, ultimately goes far beyond demand response.

The issue at hand is all about the ability of the federal government to set market rules for local power systems – that is, the portion of the grid that reaches individual homes and businesses – versus the regional grid that transports power over long distances across the US. It therefore has implications for the value of rooftop solar systems, backup generators, and even Tesla’s Powerwall battery – basically anything that would allow individual customers to supply energy to the power grid or reduce demands on an already strained infrastructure.

In fact, Order 745 could very well be the biggest energy-related Supreme Court case in decades.

The significance of this particular case is rooted in the two different and opposing directions in which technology, policy and good old consumer behavior are pushing and pulling the business of electricity.

On the one hand is a federal policy of playing a greater role in the business of managing the regional power grid, supplanting the traditional electric utility. Regional organizations now manage portions of the national grid for more than 70 per cent of all electricity consumed in the US.

The other trend is the increasing democratization of electric power production through rooftop solar photovoltaics, small-scale energy storage devices (like Tesla’s Powerwall) and increased interest in “micro-grids” to produce, distribute and manage electricity on a localized scale. Local energy is rapidly becoming the new local food. (There has even been a buzzword – “loca-volt” – coined to capture this movement.)

The simultaneous trends of regional grid management and democratized electricity supply are now in tension with one another, not for any technological reason, but primarily for reasons of policy and economics.

The Federal Power Act, which was passed in 1935, attempts to draw a “bright line” between those elements of the electricity system that are under federal versus state jurisdiction.

The federal role is to regulate the regional transmission grid – including the power lines that transport electricity long distances and across state lines – and wholesale markets for buying and selling power. The role of the states is limited to the local grid that delivers electricity to homes and businesses and to retail sales.

Market rules like Order 745 provided a pathway for these two trends to be complementary, rather than in opposition, without a patchwork of individual state regulations.

Want solar panels on your house? Sure thing – and those solar panels could also provide power to the grid at a price, perhaps avoiding the need to build some new power plants. Or you could provide demand response by using less electricity from the grid during certain days, and more from your solar panels. Order 745 created rules to compensate people and businesses on the wholesale energy markets to lower power use, whether it was from a bank of giant batteries or highrise buildings in New York City.

Distributed energy technologies

Demand response and Order 745 are so significant because they have blurred the bright line between federal and state control over the electricity sector. This bright line is increasingly becoming an artifact of our federalist legal structure.

A regional grid operator’s primary function is to ensure the lights stay on by having enough power to match the demand. But there is no technological reason that demand response, backup generators or energy storage banks, electric vehicles, and other emerging technologies that are all part of the “smart grid” could not serve the same function for regional power grids that large power plants do today.

And there are good reasons to believe that harnessing loca-volt energy and energy efficiency will actually be cheaper than building new power plants for times when large-scale wind and solar plants aren’t available (France and some places in the US already do this, through controllable hot water heaters).

Striking down Order 745 would make the bright line ever so brighter, but it would also complicate the economic environment for one of the most innovative segments of the electricity sector.

This case, ultimately, is far more significant than getting paid for not using electricity. It’s about who gets to set the rules of the road for emerging technology in the electricity sector – the states or the federal government – and whether the US will be able to modernize its energy policy the same way that it would like to modernize its power grid. (Full disclosure: My university employer, Penn State, has been involved in a demonstration project that uses battery energy storage to balance fluctuations on the power grid in Pennsylvania and I am an advisor to the Microgrid Systems Laboratory in New Mexico.)

Before launching Tesla’s wall-mounted batteries, perhaps Mr Musk should have sat on his hands for a bit longer.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

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Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk is disrupting the establishment – again. The chief executive of Tesla Motors said Thursday that other companies and organizations are free to use and build on Tesla technology patents without fear of being sued.

It’s tough to say what caveats Musk may be attaching to such openness, but the decision could prove a pivotal point in the history of modern electric vehicles.

Writing on the company’s blog, Musk made clear that his decision was in the spirit of the open source movement.

“Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport,” Musk wrote. “If we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines behind us to inhibit others, we are acting in a manner contrary to that goal.”

So to instead further that goal, Musk made an unconventional pledge: “Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.”

Wow. Double wow.

In Musk’s view, aggressive patent protection has only served to stifle progress and “entrench the positions of giant corporations and enrich those in the legal profession.” He equated the receiving of patents as “a lottery ticket to a lawsuit.”

During its early years Tesla took patent protection seriously out of concern the big carmakers would try to copy its technology and then use their manufacturing, sales and marketing power to crush Tesla. Upon reflection, Musk said it was the wrong approach to take. The reality, he pointed out, is that major automakers are not dedicating enough resources to electric car development and that is hurting us all.

“Given that annual new vehicle production is approaching 100 million per year and the global fleet is approximately 2 billion cars, it is impossible for Tesla to build electric cars fast enough to address the carbon crisis,” Musk wrote. “By the same token, it means the market is enormous. Our true competition is not the small trickle of non-Tesla electric cars being produced, but rather the enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out of the world’s factories every day.”

The bottom line, he added, is that there’s more than enough market opportunity to go around that Tesla doesn’t need to jealously guard its patents.

“We believe that applying the open source philosophy to our patents will strengthen rather than diminish Tesla’s position,” he said.

The proof, however, is in the puddin’. What Musk means, exactly, by “in good faith” leaves a lot open to interpretation. Is Tesla really giving up control or is Musk talking about a kind of managed open-source movement – open-source lite?

More clarity will be needed. Big carmakers – more precisely, the lawyers of big car companies – won’t simply take Musk at his word. CK expects Tesla will release more details of its newfound openness over the coming weeks and months.

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