Elon Musk approves carbon tax at Tesla shareholders meeting

Tesla CEO Elon Musk again endorsed the idea of ​​a federal carbon tax at the company’s 2021 annual shareholders meeting on Thursday.

He said that the three parts of a “sustainable future”, according to him, are solar and wind power, batteries for energy storage and electric vehicles of all kinds, including cars, boats and planes.

“As we move towards a sustainable energy grid and electric vehicles, we are obviously moving towards a fully sustainable energy economy, which we want to achieve as quickly as possible. The earliest would be best ! And can there be a carbon tax? I mean, what is it, ”Musk said Thursday, expressing his impatience.

A carbon tax, or tax on greenhouse gas emissions, has long been proposed as a way to reduce the emissions of gases that cause climate change, particularly carbon dioxide. Some advocates believe that a carbon tax should increase over time to give the industry time to discover and deploy low-carbon alternatives for the products and processes they use that emit CO2.

More than 40 governments have adopted some sort of carbon price, according to the New York Times, but the United States has not.

A carbon tax would help Tesla by making gasoline more expensive, which would make its electric vehicles more attractive, and by raising energy prices, which could prompt homeowners to adopt solar panels from Tesla and other suppliers. . Musk acknowledged this, but noted it would hurt his reusable rocket company, SpaceX, a massive consumer of fossil fuels that plans to drill for natural gas and use methane in its rocket operations in Boca Chica.

“So what about a carbon tax? We really need it, ”he said.

Musk also strongly supported the idea of ​​extracting more material from used batteries through improved recycling technology and processes.

“The materials in the battery are definitely recyclable. The gas that burns is not. CO2 is an extremely stable molecule. The atmosphere of Mars has been mostly CO2 for billions of years. C “is extremely stable. So sometimes people worry about methane. Don’t worry too much about methane. Methane quickly breaks down into CO2. Methane is not a stable molecule. CO2 is extremely stable,” he said. Musk urged his audience, as if he was looking to justify SpaceX’s use of methane.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, “methane is more than 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.” Methane is also the second most abundant greenhouse gas emitted by human activity and industry, after carbon dioxide. It represents around 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

At the annual meeting of shareholders, Musk also touched on Tesla’s goal of building cars closer to where customers order them. This can save the company on shipping costs, but also reduce its environmental footprint from shipping, Musk suggested.

“The amount of money we spend on flying coins around the world is not huge,” Musk said. “It makes sense to have production on the continent where the consumers are located.”

Currently, Tesla has a new factory underway near Austin, Texas, which is expected to produce batteries on site, and another outside of Berlin, Germany.

Tesla also confirmed on Thursday that it has moved its headquarters to Austin.

Musk expects the Texas plant, dubbed Giga-Austin, to follow in the footsteps of the Tesla plant in Shanghai, which now produces more electric cars than at its original plant in Fremont, California.

At the annual meeting of shareholders of at least a year, Musk proclaimed that battery and manufacturing advancements Tesla is working on could soon lead to cheaper cars on the part of the company. “In about 3 years, we are confident that we will be able to create a very compelling $ 25,000 electric vehicle that will also be fully autonomous,” he said at the time. Tesla also said last year that it was designing and producing its own 4,680 battery cells at a factory in Fremont, California.

Musk did not give an update on the schedule for a $ 25,000 electric vehicle on Thursday.

But he said Tesla wouldn’t produce 4,680 battery cells in Texas this year. Instead, it would produce these cells at its pilot plant in Fremont and ship them to Texas as the production of the Model Y increases.

Musk said he believes the crossover utility vehicle will likely become Tesla’s bestseller, overtaking the Model 3 sedan in popularity.

Earlier this month, Tesla said it delivered 241,300 electric vehicles in the third quarter of 2021 and produced 237,823 cars in the same period.

Shipments are the closest approximation to the sales reported by Tesla. The company hit a new record as shipments from other automakers fell from the same period last year, largely due to supply chain issues including a global shortage of chips.

Musk doesn’t see the global supply chain issues fully resolved until 2023, he said Thursday.