Gavin Newsom Wants To Break Up With Elon Musk. Tesla Is Making That Difficult.

California has been trying to break up with Elon Musk for years. Now, in an unforeseen twist, his auto company could hold the keys to saving the state’s electric truck ambitions.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has spent much of President Donald Trump’s second term slamming Musk over his role in helping the president hollow out the federal government, and for his support of conservative politicians globally, like Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and the German far-right AfD party. As recently as last month, the governor called Musk “one of the great disappointments” of our time, pointing to the billionaire's aggressive push to shift Tesla’s focus from electric cars to AI and humanoid robots.

The harsh rhetoric comes after a yearslong tit-for-tat between Newsom and Musk, who has frequently panned California’s handling of wildfires, immigration and transgender rights.

Musk’s rightward shift has also turned some liberal California car owners against Tesla, which has seen its market share in the state plummet. Newsom has, in turn, threatened to cut Tesla out of a proposed state rebate program to support EV buyers.

But Tesla’s meteoric rise in the heavy-duty truck market offers a far different narrative of a company long known for being an electrification innovator, and all but guarantees it will be a big player in California for years to come.

California trucking fleets are flocking to the Tesla Semi — an electric big rig the company plans to roll out in mass this fall — which accounted for 90 percent of the 1,067 vouchers the state awarded over the last year to subsidize the purchase of zero-emission trucks. That’s more vouchers than for all other electric truck makers combined since 2021, according to the International Council on Clean Transportation.

After California’s plan to phase out the sale of diesel trucks by 2036 was rocked last year by the Trump administration’s dismantling of the state’s electric truck sales mandate, the Semi has given environmental advocates a new sense of optimism and hope. And Musk’s new electric trucks could also bolster California’s efforts to reduce persistent pollution in areas like Los Angeles and the Central Valley, which often rank among the worst in the nation for air quality. An American Lung Association report released last year found California’s revoked electric truck rules saved residents billions in medical bills.

“I think the Tesla semi is a step change advance,” said Adam Browning, the policy head of Forum Mobility, which develops truck charging depots. “It's a transformative vehicle.”

Fleet operators say Tesla’s rapid ascent in the heavy-duty space, which includes commercial trucks and buses, is a simple matter of dollars and cents. The Semi has a median price tag of $290,000, roughly half the price of models offered by companies like Volvo, Kenworth and Peterbilt. The Tesla’s 500-mile range is also double that of any other competitor in the market.

As Tesla has begun to roll out the Semi (it’s currently available for pre-orders), the automaker has also promised to build an extensive network of high-powered chargers, easing concerns about shipping companies' ability to move products without significant delays.

That charging hub rollout isn’t just happening in California. Tesla is also eyeballing Texas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois and Washington, where nearly two dozen sites are in development.

Rudy Diaz, founder and CEO of Hight Logistics, a shipping company with a fleet of electric and diesel trucks, compared the Tesla Semi to the iPhone's introduction, which revolutionized the cell phone market and displaced competitors like BlackBerry.

“There's a reason why BlackBerry is barely in the market anymore, and iPhone became the best-selling phone,” Diaz said. “Tesla is on the verge of that, because their product is that much better.”

Diaz, whose company is based in LA County, said the Tesla Semi could soon displace fossil fuel options on journeys to places as far away as Las Vegas or Phoenix. That’s because electricity rates are more reliable than fluctuating diesel costs, amid a global oil crisis linked to the Iran war.

And unlike in the passenger car market, where political affiliation and personal dislike for Musk have impacted Tesla’s standing, Diaz said decisions in the commercial market are ultimately driven by companies’ bottom lines.

“Why would you compromise that, because of your emotions or your political views?” he said. “That's just stupid.”

Even environmental groups that have soured on Musk acknowledge that the Tesla Semi could be a game changer.

“At the end of the day, getting zero-emission, heavy-duty trucks on the road is going to have the biggest impact on local air pollution around ports, around warehouses, around rail yards,” said Katelyn Roedner Sutter, the California state director of the Environmental Defense Fund.

Market researchers also argue the Tesla Semi could fundamentally change a truck market long dominated by four manufacturers — Daimler, PACCAR, Navistar International and Volvo — that together account for 99 percent of sales and haven’t offered cheaper zero-emission models, despite the growing prevalence of electric trucks in Asia and Europe.

“This is going to demonstrate that if you price the product to sell, the economics alone will drive this market,” said Ray Minjares, heavy-duty vehicles program director at the International Council on Clean Transportation. “I think we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg here with what not only Tesla is capable of doing, but what this market transformation may look like.”

Former state regulators say that despite the excitement around the Tesla Semi, California needs to be cautious about letting any one manufacturer dominate the truck market — especially a company run by a polarizing figure like Musk.

Craig Segall, a former deputy executive officer at the California Air Resources Board who helped design the state’s now-defunct truck emissions rules, said the state should be using its economic power to support the development of new companies that can compete with Tesla and traditional truck makers, and drive innovation of cheaper models.

That could also help California regulators ease tensions with electric truck startups, which have chafed at Tesla’s dominance of the state's voucher program.

“The central irony of Elon is that there's only one Elon,” Segall said. “Had we been doing this right, there would have been a lot of them.”