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Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) may be Elon Musk’s congressional nemesis, but it sounds like she’s finally done with her own yearslong attachment to a Tesla electric vehicle.
The congresswoman is now “looking into trading in” her Tesla, she told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, having previously said that she was looking for an electric car made with union labor. Tesla does not have a unionized workforce, with Musk regularly taunting the United Auto Workers union on social media—at times, regulators say, to an illegal degree.
Ocasio-Cortez’s promise to ditch her Tesla came amid an historic, wide-ranging strike from the UAW against Ford, GM, and Stellantis, collectively known as the Big Three. Later on Sunday, she joined fellow representative Cori Bush (D-Mo.) in Wentzville, Mo., joining the picket line outside a GM plant. On Tuesday, President Joe Biden will travel to Michigan to join striking workers on the picket line.
Yet Ocasio-Cortez’s Tesla dilemma gets at a difficult tension at the heart of the Biden administration’s approach to the auto industry: that the drive to adopt EVs, pushed through measures like the Inflation Reduction Act, means bolstering a part of the automaking sector that does not use union labor.
Ocasio-Cortez told CBS that she bought her EV “during the pandemic…before a vaccine had come out,” suggesting that she bought the car in 2020 (COVID vaccines were first authorized for emergency use in December of that year). A Tesla was “the safest way” to travel between New York and Washington, she said.
But newer models from other companies that boast a similar range to Teslas now mean that she can switch cars, she said.
According to a roundup by Politico earlier this year, eight members of Congress drive Teslas, out of at least 25 who drive EVs overall. Tesla drivers include Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.).
Ocasio-Cortez told Politico at the time that she “hoped to get a union-made” EV to replace her Tesla.
Why do EVs matter in the auto strike?
The Biden administration is offering billions of dollars in subsidies to grow local manufacturing of EVs and EV batteries, encouraging companies like Hyundai, GM, and even Chinese battery makers to launch new U.S. plants.
Yet these plants, even those from U.S. manufacturers, are usually not unionized. EV manufacturing also uses about 40% less labor overall, claims Ford CEO Jim Farley.
Concerns over the EV transition, and what it means for unionized labor, are partly motivating the United Auto Workers’ decision to strike. Part of the union’s initial demands included a requirement that those working in Big Three plants get the same protections and benefits as those working on gas-powered vehicles.
Yet car companies argue that accepting the union’s demands would widen an existing cost gap with Tesla and foreign automakers like Toyota, which don’t use union labor.
Last week, UAW president Shawn Fain dug at Musk on Face the Nation, saying that workers at companies like Tesla are getting paid less “so that greedy CEOs and greedy people like Elon Musk can build more rocket ships.”
“We do not want the transition from a fossil fuel economy to an electric economy to represent an erosion in the unionization and rights of workers,” Ocasio-Cortez said Sunday on CBS.
The UAW expanded its strike on Friday, hitting more plants from GM and Stellantis. Ford was spared, due to progress in negotiations.
Musk’s views on unions
Ocasio-Cortez and Musk have been locked in a social media feud for several months now. The congresswoman complained in May that the Tesla CEO was boosting an account parodying her on X, which Musk owns. For his part, Musk has needled Ocasio-Cortez about her anti-billionaire rhetoric and joked about the prospect of dating her.
Still, Tesla’s union issues predate Musk’s jabs at Ocasio-Cortez.
Tesla’s U.S. workforce is not unionized. The UAW tried to organize the carmaker’s California plant in 2018. Musk, at the time, asked why employees would choose to give up stock options upon joining the union—a statement that the UAW, and the National Labor Relations Board, alleged was an illegal attempt to suppress labor activity. The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals is currently evaluating an NLRB order for Tesla to delete the tweet and rehire an employee allegedly fired for organizing.
Yet Tesla is the world’s largest maker of battery-powered vehicles, producing 1.37 million cars in 2022. Only Chinese EV maker BYD makes more electric cars than Tesla—it made 1.86 million battery and plug-in hybrids last year.
Musk has, at times, complained that the Biden administration is ignoring Tesla’s success to work with more established automakers with unionized workforces. After Tesla was snubbed by a White House EV summit in 2021, Musk accused the president of being “controlled by the unions.”
