Elon Musk says Biden’s $2 trillion, electric-car-friendly spending bill won’t pass

spending bill, which Senate Democrats hope to pass by Christmas, will fund EV charging stations and provide Tax credit up to $12,500 for union-manufactured electric vehicles in the United States. Remarkable, Tesla factories are not unions, and Tesla was absent from much of the Biden administration’s EV program.

“It would have been better if the bill hadn’t been passed,” Musk told the Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern on Monday. “Literally, I’m saying get rid of all the subsidies… the government should, I think, just try to get out of the way and not stand in the way of progress.”

Musk also criticized the size of the bill, saying it would increase the federal deficit to unsustainable levels.

When asked about the infrastructure bill, Musk said Tesla wasn’t really considering any of it. When pressed by Stern about what critical US infrastructure needs are, Musk said the need for improved airports and highways, and suggested urban tunnels to reduce congestion. . Musk, of course, is also the founder of The Boring Co., a tunneling company whose services he has provided to many of the US metro areas, including Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Chicago and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., as a solution to traffic congestion.

In the wide-ranging interview, Musk also said the upcoming Cybertruck could be Tesla’s best vehicle ever (“It’s going to be awesome”), hinting at his future by saying that no one should be CEO forever (“It would be nice to have a little more free time instead of just working day and night from waking up to going to bed seven days a week”), and said he splits his time equally between Tesla and SpaceX.

He also said his neuroscience startup, Neuralink, hopes to start human trials next year. “I think we have an opportunity with Neuralink to be able to restore total body function to people with spinal cord injuries,” he said.