Donald Trump has reportedly told oil executives that he will end electric car incentives if they contribute $1 billion to his election campaign.

The former president has been all over the place with his comments on electric vehicles.

Most of the time, in his rallies, he has brought them up as a talking point to ridicule them – focusing on the premise that “don’t go far” and “charging is a pain”. He went as far as calling them a “hoax”.

But he has also claimed that he is “all for electric cars” and during his 2020 campaign, he tried to take credit for incentives put in place during the Obama administration.

In practice, the former president was trying to put in place policies to slow down electric car adoption – at the request of some automakers, to be fair. The Trump administration attempted to eliminate the tax credit for electric vehicles in the original version of their 2020 budget, though the provision never passed.

Furthermore, Trump was actively seeking to roll back vehicle emission standards that were encouraging automakers to produce more electric cars.

With this new 2024 campaign, the former president has been clearer about the fact that he is against any initiatives that would accelerate the rollout of electric vehicles.

Now, the Washington Post reports that it had sources in a meeting between Trump and oil executives in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club last month. In the report, the publication claimed that Trump made them an offer when asked about his plan recording environmental regulations:

Trump’s response stunned several of the executives in the room overlooking the ocean: You all are wealthy enough, he said, that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House. At the dinner, he vowed to immediately reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted, according to people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation.

The former president reportedly specifically mention rolling back policies on electric vehicles and wind energy.

Electrek’s Take

I don’t like to get too political at Electrek. Those who know me personally know I’m as apolitical as it gets. I don’t believe the biggest changes come from politics. I’m not biased toward any side in politics, but I am biased toward electric vehicles and I do like policies that encourage them, especially those that incentivize them in a way that represents their benefits for the environment. Since Trump has a real chance of becoming president again, it’s important to cover his views and policies on electric vehicles.

I think it’s pretty clear at this point that Trump would roll back incentives if reelected, which I would have no problem with as long as he implements a carbon tax to properly represent the cost of fossil fuel burning, but who are we kidding?

Even if you don’t believe in human’s contribution to climate change, you must at least believe to clean air?

Everyone agrees that burning fossil fuels is extremely polluting. That’s why you don’t start your car’s engine inside your garage. Now, that’s for a small, closed environment, but the science is also clear that this affects general air pollution when you have millions of cars in the same area, which is most cities today.

This air pollution has a massive health cost calculated in the billions of dollars in the US alone.

From this perspective alone, it makes sense to encourage the purchase of EVs over ICE vehicles. Then, there’s also the clear fact that the rest of the world is moving to EVs at an incredible pace.

A strong market helps a strong industry. If the US auto market falls behind in electrification, the US auto industry will also fall behind and it will be another manufacturing industry that the US is going to lose.

You don’t want to be the last country with a strong fossil fuel industry.