In his State of the Union Address, President Joe Biden mentioned that American manufacturers like Ford and General Motors are investing large amounts of money into building electric vehicles. These figures were shared via the President’s official Twitter account, which got Elon Musk’s attention.
The tweet mentions that Ford is investing $11B, while GM will make its largest investment yet, with $7B, creating a total of 15,000 jobs in the process.
The Tesla CEO responded to this tweet with details on how his company has invested and created more opportunities than both companies combined.
“Tesla has created over 50,000 US jobs building electric vehicles & is investing more than double GM + Ford combined.”, said Musk, tossing in “fyi too the person controlling this Twitter account.”
This isn’t the first time that the tech CEO has called out the President for ignoring Tesla. The White House did not invite him to a meeting with auto industry CEOs in the past.
Biden also left the company out of his ‘Build Back Better’ plan and locked Tesla out of the total $12,500 tax credit offered for EV purchases. Both these incidents were immediately criticized by Elon Musk on Twitter.
It led to a Change.org petition urging U.S. President Joe Biden to “acknowledge Tesla’s EV leadership.” Nearly 60,000 backers signed the petition in just a few days.
As of late, the White House has recognized Tesla and Elon Musk, but it took protest and a petition for Biden to acknowledge the automaker, instead of just praising legacy automakers such as GM and their union labor.
