Musk Met Biden Officials to Discuss Boosting EV Production

Akayla Gardner, Bloomberg News

Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., arrives at court during the SolarCity trial in Wilmington, Delaware, U.S., on Tuesday, July 13, 2021. Musk was cool but combative as he testified in a Delaware courtroom that Tesla's more than $2 billion acquisition of SolarCity in 2016 wasn't a bailout of the struggling solar provider. , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk met with Biden administration officials to discuss ways to advance electric vehicle production, according to the White House.

John Podesta, a senior adviser to President Joe Biden on clean energy innovation and implementation, and Mitch Landrieu, a senior adviser and coordinator on infrastructure, met with Musk at the Washington office of Tesla. The meeting was held Friday, according to a White House official.

The relationship between Musk and the White House has been fraught since Biden took office, with the president saying that it was worth investigating the billionaire’s relationships with other countries after his acquisition of Twitter Inc.

Musk has previously bristled publicly that the White House has hosted events promoting electric cars produced by union labor without acknowledging Tesla’s role in the market. He has said he plans to vote for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis if he challenges Biden in 2024.

(Adds background on Musk, Biden beginning in third paragraph. An earlier version corrected the time and place of the meeting.)