Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, spoke with senior White House officials on the Biden administration’s efforts to expand the market for electric vehicles on Friday, according to press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
“That meeting did happen today,” she told reporters.
Musk, who has had sometimes openly prickly relations with President Joe Biden, met infrastructure development coordinator Mitch Landrieu and clean energy advisor John Podesta.
They discussed “electrification and how the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act can advance EVs and increase the electrification more broadly,” Jean-Pierre said, referring to two major pieces of legislation passed under Biden providing subsidies and incentives to bolster clean energy, electric vehicles, and general infrastructure.
Jean-Pierre said Biden did not meet with Musk, but “it’s important that senior members of his team had a meeting.”
With ownership of the country’s most well-known EV brand, space programs, and Twitter, the billionaire entrepreneur has an uncommon position at the nexus of cutting-edge industry and politics.
He regularly engages in conflict with the Biden administration and frequently adopts right-wing talking lines on Twitter.
As Congress considers possible restrictions on social media sites, he said that on Thursday he spoke with Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
Musk tweeted that he went to “discuss ensuring that this platform is fair to both parties.”
