The days leading up to Donald Trump’s inauguration, which featured multiple terrorist attacks and apocalyptic wildfires across Los Angeles, won’t be remembered as an especially hopeful time.
However, there’s still plenty to look forward to with the growth of artificial intelligence in the coming years, according to Joe Jefferson, president of the Tesla Owners Club of NorCal-Reno.
Last month, we cruised through traffic in Los Gatos, California, in the custom white and carbon-fiber interior of his all-black Tesla Cybertruck, letting the EV’s Full Self-Driving mode handle the controls.
“To me it’s like experiencing the age of going from trains to automobiles,” he said. “That whole revolution, we’re in that now.”
Just minutes earlier, he’d punched our destination, a nearby Target, into the car’s computer. Then off we went, no humans required. As we chatted, he virtually never touched the wheel, gesticulating with a full cup of coffee instead. At first it felt uncanny, but soon totally normal.
His source of optimism is the man who helped create this space-age vehicle: Elon Musk. The recent election marked the moment that Musk, already the richest man in the world, became the most powerful private citizen in America.
First, he was a key Trump campaign surrogate, crisscrossing the country as part of a personal $277 million commitment to elect Trump and his fellow GOP candidates. Now, with his much-hyped Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative, Musk could have major influence on federal spending and regulatory priorities for years to come, even if the DOGE is technically a non-government advisory body.
For the Tesla owners clubs of California, it’s a good time to be a Musk fan, even if their hero’s new allies are somewhat unexpected.
How can a group of climate-conscious, high-tech, EV-loving, liberal-leaning Californians feel so good as their hero aligns with an anachronistic, 78-year-old climate-denying Republican who wants to increase fossil fuel production? Actually, it’s pretty simple.
The Republican’s campaign made great efforts to seem tech-friendly, choosing a former venture capitalist as vice-president, promising to make the U.S. the crypto capital of the world, and courting support in Silicon Valley. Club members want the same things Musk does—self-driving electric cars, cutting-edge AI made in America, space exploration—and believe Trump will leave Musk alone to achieve this.
Kelvin Gee, vice-president of Tesla Owners of Silicon Valley, the largest Tesla club in North America, said it was initially “disappointing” as a Democrat to see Musk back Trump. Still, he sees the logic behind Musk’s strategy to try and influence a politician who “basically doesn’t stand for much, who flip flops like a fish out of water.”
“I think he is playing chess while everyone is playing checkers,” Gee told The Independent. “If you have trust in Elon, this is probably going to be a very positive outcome, both financially and in other ways.”
Gee, like many in the driver’s club, owns Tesla stock, which has surged since the election, helping make Musk the first human being in modern economic history worth over $400 billion. He said Musk is not always popular when he first says or does things, but history usually ends up validating him.
“He’s almost always right,” Gee added.
