U.S. President Joe Biden did not invite Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) to a big event on Thursday at the White House, to announce the government’s commitment to e-mobility.
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Big Three At The White House
Biden invited the likes of General Motors Company (NYSE:GM), Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F), and Stellantis NV (BIT:STLA) to assert his administration’s clamp on internal combustion engines through fuel economy regulations.
He also invited the Big Three to talk about the future of electric vehicles.
However, Tesla, being the flagship EV manufacturer in the industry, was not invited. Biden also left out Nissan Motor Co Ltd (TYO:7201), whose Leaf model helped pioneer electric cars, and Honda Motor Co Ltd (TYO:7267) –the first automaker Japan to pledge to phase out gasoline cars.
Neither Volkswagen Group Common Stock (ETR:VOW3) nor Toyota Motor Corp (NYSE:TM) (TYO:7203) were invited either. The former has invested $41 billion in its electrification plan, while the latter has veered towards a hybrid future and is lobbying in the U.S. Congress to win support for its cause.
One common factor among the invited is their deeply American roots. Besides General Motors and Ford, Stellantis NV is the outcome of the merge between the Anglo-Italian Fiat Chrysler and PSA Group.
Why Was Not Tesla Invited?
Ray Curry, president of the United Auto Workers (UAW), was also invited to the White House, and he said before the event: “We are lagging behind China and Europe as manufacturers invest billions in growing their markets and expanding production ... We need to make investments here in the U.S.”
Writing for automotive website Jalopnik, Erik Shilling pointed to the reason why Tesla’s Elon Musk was left out: “I assumed that was because Tesla’s whole deal is messy and weird and why would the White House want any part of that.”
“Except that wasn’t it, either. The reason is pretty simple: Tesla’s factories are non-union, while the Big Three’s aren’t.”
He asserts that Elon Musk’s company has usually been unsympathetic towards unionization at its plant in California, “and it remains a non-union shop, despite an effort by the UAW to organize that, honestly, the UAW should really revisit.”
The snub did not go unnoticed by Musk. When Squawk Box tweeted “Why is $TSLA @elonmusk absent from today's White House event on #electricvehicles?” the Tesla founder replied with a meme captioned “I’m not saying it is sabotage, but it’s sabotage.”
Tesla is part of the Entrepreneur Index, which tracks 60 of the largest publicly traded companies managed by their founders or their founders’ families.
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