San Francisco, Sep 29 – Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has criticised US President Joe Biden as “not the friendliest administration” after the White House snubbed his company last month.
Musk’s comments came during a Code Conference interview and followed a tweet in which the Tesla CEO mocked Biden using similar insults as former US President Donald Trump, reports The Verge.
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The Biden administration invited auto executives to the White House last month to discuss the shared goal of increasing the production of electric vehicles.
Top officials from Ford, General Motors and Stellantis were invited. But Tesla, which is the largest EV maker in the world, was not.
SHANGHAI, Jan. 7, 2019 (Xinhua) — Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks at the groundbreaking ceremony of Tesla Shanghai Gigafactory in Shanghai, east China, Jan. 7, 2019. U.S. electric carmaker Tesla Inc. on Monday broke ground on its Shanghai factory, becoming the first to benefit from a new policy allowing foreign carmakers to set up wholly-owned subsidiaries in China. The new plant, Tesla’s first outside the United States, is located in Lingang Area, a high-end manufacturing park in the southeast harbor of Shanghai. It is designed with an annual capacity of 500,000 electric cars. Tesla signed the agreement with the Shanghai municipal government in July 2018 to build the factory. In October, the company was approved to use an 864,885-square-meter tract of land in Lingang for its Shanghai plant. (Xinhua/Ding Ting/)
Elon Musk.(photo: TWitter)
Tesla CEO Elon Musk. (File photo: )
(170929) — ADELAIDE, Sept. 29, 2017 (Xinhua) — Elon Musk, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX), speaks on the final day of the 68th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Adelaide, Australia, on Sept. 29, 2017. SpaceX unveiled its plans to put humans on Mars as early as 2024 in Australia on Friday. (Xinhua/Yan Han) (zf)
Elon Musk shares photos of newborn son.
Photo: Twitter/@elonmusk
(170929) — ADELAIDE, Sept. 29, 2017 (Xinhua) — Elon Musk, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX), speaks on the final day of the 68th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Adelaide, Australia, on Sept. 29, 2017. SpaceX unveiled its plans to put humans on Mars as early as 2024 in Australia on Friday. (Xinhua/Yan Han) (zf)
Joe Biden. (Xinhua/)
Joe Biden and Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi.(photo:Instagram)
Boris Johnson and Joe Biden.
Biden administrationâs break from Trump opens doors for India in Iran and Afghanistan (credit: Indian Narrative)
US President Joe Biden
US President-elect Joe Biden
One potential reason that Tesla wasn’t invited is that its factory workforce is not unionised, while Biden is a big supporter of unions.
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During the Code interview, Musk went a step further, claiming that Biden’s administration was “controlled by the unions”.
Tesla has been actively fighting against an attempt to organise Tesla workers at the company’s Fremont, California plant. Musk himself was found to have violated labour law when he tweeted anti-union comments in 2019.
Musk has been tweaking Biden on Twitter for weeks. Last week, when asked why Biden didn’t issue a statement about SpaceX’s recent rocket launch, Musk tweeted, “He’s still sleeping,” echoing a Trump nickname for Biden, “Sleepy Joe”.
