Sours on EVs

Musk sours Democrats on EVs, poll finds

Elon Musk isn’t just turning Democrats off to electric vehicles. He’s also killing their appetite for EV policies, a new poll finds.

By Alex Nieves

Elon Musk played a key role in killing California’s electric vehicle mandate — and he’s still a thorn in the side of Democrats as they try to get their EV ambitions back on track.

A new national poll conducted by the Electric Vehicle Intelligence Report just before Senate Republicans voted last week to revoke California’s vehicle emissions rules — shared exclusively with POLITICO — shows how much Musk and Tesla have complicated the EV landscape for Democratic voters.

While liberal voters — the most likely buyers of EVs — leaned towards both supporting requirements for car companies to sell more electric models and keeping California’s ability to set stronger-than-federal emissions standards, they don’t like the credit-trading system state officials devised to make that happen.

More than half of Democrats surveyed — 56 percent — said they oppose “allowing carmakers to sell their extra credits to other carmakers” that don’t hit their sales targets, while only 20 percent said they support the concept, according to the poll from Democratic consultant and pollster Evan Roth Smith. Republicans and independents also balked at the idea, with fewer than 30 percent in both categories saying they support credit sales.

A chart shows that 23 percent of consumers support and 53 percent oppose allowing carmakers to sell their extra credits to other carmakers that do not meet the requirement to sell a certain amount of low-emissions car or electric vehicles.

Car buyers don’t like policies that allow automakers to earn credits for EV production and sell them to competitors. | Electric Vehicle Intelligence Report

Tesla has already contributed to stagnating EV sales in California, which saw slightly fewer purchases over the first three months of 2025 compared to the same period last year. While registrations of EV models by other makers jumped 14 percent, Tesla plunged by just over 21 percent, canceling out any gains.

Market experts say the results are in part due to the complicated nature of EV sales regulations. But they also point to a string of stories highlighting the fact that California’s rules undoubtedly helped turn Tesla into an EV behemoth. That’s because the state’s mandate requires automakers who don’t meet their sales requirements to buy credits from those that sell more, offering Musk’s company a lucrative revenue stream as the dominant player for over a decade.

“I think what it’s really about is hostility to Tesla and how they’ve been benefiting from this,” said Dan Sperling, director of the Institute for Transportation Studies at UC Davis and a former member of the California Air Resources Board. “They just see it as Tesla getting a boondoggle deal.”

Musk’s rise to the role of Trump’s top fundraiser, adviser and architect of the administration’s slash-and-burn of the federal workforce has made Tesla — his largest and most public-facing company — the target of Democratic outrage.

The eccentric billionaire has since hinted that he’ll step back from politics, as Tesla’s revenues have plummeted amid sales contractions in Europe and California, America’s biggest car market.

But Smith said the damage has already been done, and California officials now need to go on the offensive to create daylight between Musk, Tesla and the larger EV market.

“We have the president of the United States selling Teslas from the White House,” Smith said. “So if Democrats want to preserve a political environment where they can enact real climate policy around EVs, they have to be a little more courageous and play a similar game.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom has signaled he’s thinking about playing hardball. Newsom said in November that he’d push to restore state EV tax credits if the Trump administration does away with a $7,500 federal incentive, as the “megabill” passed by House Republicans last week would largely do. (It would cap benefits for companies that already have a large market share or have received substantial state support, i.e. Tesla).

Newsom spokesperson Daniel Villaseñor, when asked about the tax credit proposal, pointed to a press conference last week where the governor said he’s still waiting to see what happens in the Senate and that lawmakers should assess impacts on the state budget.

Smith said now is the time for Democrats to dig in.

“I don’t think Democrats should be shy about this,” he said.