Tesla and Musk Not Invited to White House EV Party. That Makes No Sense. - Barron's

A factory that makes lithium batteries for electric cars and other uses.
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President Joe Biden wants 50% of cars manufactured to be electric by 2030. He wants America to be an electric-vehicles leader. He surrounded himself with automotive executives to discuss the initiative on Thursday. Curiously, Tesla, the undisputed U.S. EV leader, wasn’t represented.

They weren’t even invited—at least according to Elon Musk. Regardless of how investors feel about Tesla or how they feel about peers, it’s odd.

Tesla (ticker: TSLA), of course, sells more EVs than anyone in America. Between 2015 and 2020 there were 974,000 all-electric vehicles sold in the U.S. Roughly 730,000 of those, or 75%, are Teslas—they are the American EV market.

(Tesla doesn’t report deliveries by geography, but they report sales by geographic region, allowing for a calculation of local volumes.)

So far in 2021, Tesla has sold about 386,000 vehicles. Roughly 165,000 were sold in the U.S. General Motors (GM) has sold only about 20,000 EVs over the same span.

The White House didn’t immediately comment on the decision, but Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said on CNBC, “We are moving toward a future where this is all across the market. I don’t want there to be a perception that this is just…a luxury thing or…or cars that you use to zip around cities.”

That statement is as curious as the noninvite.

Tesla does have luxury offerings. Its early strategy was, essentially, to start with a low-volume, expensive car and then expand into other segments of the market. It worked. Tesla is now the world’s most valuable car company. Gross-profit margins are better than BMW (BMW.Germany). Unit sales in the first half of 2021 are up 116% year over year. And the company has generated about $9 billion in free cash flow over the past 12 months while building two new plants.

It has nonluxury offerings, too. Today, a new Model 3 starts under $40,000. That’s about $15,000 more than the base price of a Ford Fusion, Honda Accord, or Toyota Camry, but less than the base price of similar-size BMW or Audi sedans. The top-level trim in the Fusion-Camry-Accord class runs almost $40,000.

About zipping around the city: Tesla also operates a global charging network of over 25,000 chargers with nationwide coverage in the U.S.

Tesla is a very American company. That can’t be the reason for the snub. All of its U.S. sales volume is made in the U.S. It has two of the top 10 cars in Cars.com ‘s American-Made Index. The Model 3 is first on the list and the Model Y is third. Both are assembled in Fremont, Calif. Later in 2021, Tesla should start producing its Cybertruck—which starts at $40,000—in the company’s new Austin, Texas, plant.

The Tesla snub has been good fodder for Musk on Twitter. And it doesn’t really matter in the long run, just so long as the federal government doesn’t play favorites—either way—as the traditional auto industry ramps up its EV effort and overall EV competition builds.

The noninvite didn’t seem to particularly Tesla stock, although with a 0.5% gain Thursday—the seventh consecutive rise—it still lagged the broader market. The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.6% and 0.8%, respectively.

Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com

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