By Dana Hull | Bloomberg
The State Department’s procurement forecast removed the mention of Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc. in relation to a planned $400 million armored EV purchase after reports emerged about it on Wednesday.
The December version of the document had included an “Armored Tesla” budget item that would span five years and start in 2025, however the document was revised to remove Tesla’s name. This followed reports of the company’s moniker on the procurement document from Drop Site News and the New York Times.
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Musk’s unprecedented role in US President Donald Trump’s administration as overseer of government spending has raised questions about how he might police himself when one of his companies competes for official contracts. He has said that all activities by his Department of Government Efficiency would be handled with transparency.
Tesla’s name had appeared in the document near that of BMW AG, whose armored X5 and X7 SUVs the State Department is also planning to buy. The German company’s name remains on the list, while Tesla’s has been excised, leaving the $400 million contract — still at the planning stage — now listed for a generic designation of “armored electric vehicles.”
No government contract has been awarded to Tesla or any other auto manufacturer to produce armored EVs, a State Department spokesperson said in a statement. The solicitation, which was first made during the Biden administration, has been put on hold and there are no current plans to issue it, the spokesperson said.
Representatives for Tesla didn’t respond to requests for comment after regular business hours.
Musk posted on social media platform X that he was “pretty sure” Tesla isn’t getting $400 million. Tesla shares were up 3.5% at 9:34 a.m. in New York.
Sensitivity around potential conflicts of interest with Musk’s overlapping empire of six companies is likely to continue. His SpaceX, which launches rockets for the US military and ferries astronauts to and from the International Space Station for NASA, has already been awarded billions of dollars in contracts.
A large government order, in this case most likely for Tesla’s Cybertruck, would be a significant boost. The Cybertruck is built at Tesla’s factory in Austin, Texas and costs $79,990 before any tax incentives. Musk is a huge fan of military history and spoke at the US Military Academy at West Point, New York in August. Though some people imagine that the Cybertruck might one day roam the surface of Mars, Musk has regularly hinted at its military applications.
“I just wanted to make a futuristic battle tank, something that looked like it came out of Blade Runner or Aliens or something like that,” Musk said in an Automotive News podcast in 2020.
(Updates with comment from State Department in fifth paragraph and Tesla share-price activity in seventh paragraph.)
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