The State Department is placing a $400 million contract to build armored electric vehicles on hold, a spokesperson told The Hill on Thursday.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk’s Tesla appears to have been a likely recipient of the contract, which originated from the Biden administration. The agency’s procurement forecast for the year shows the planned contract for “armored Teslas” with an anticipated award date of Sept. 30.
However, the State Department spokesperson said the solicitation for the contract “is on hold and there are no current plans to issue it.”
The Biden administration had asked the agency to “explore interest from private companies to produce armored electric vehicles,” according to the spokesperson. The department opened up a public request for information to gauge interest and heard from only company, they noted.
The request for information, which is now marked as inactive on the General Services Administration website where it was posted, sought information on “Contractors’ capability to produce high quality and armored electric vehicles.”
Amid reports that Tesla was poised to receive the contract, Musk said in a post on his social platform X, “I’m pretty sure Tesla isn’t getting $400M. No one mentioned it to me, at least.”
Musk’s companies hold extensive government contracts, raising the prospect of conflicts of interest given his wide-ranging role as the head of President Trump’s cost-cutting panel, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
SpaceX has received at least $15.4 billion in federal contracts over the past 10 years, while Tesla has won at least $352,000 in contracts, The New York Times reported in October.
When asked about Musk’s potential conflict of interests last week, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the tech billionaire would excuse himself if any conflicts appeared during his DOGE work.
“If Elon Musk comes across a conflict of interest with the contracts and the funding that DOGE is overseeing, then Elon will excuse himself from those contracts. And he has, again, abided by all applicable laws,” Leavitt said during a recent press briefing.
Despite Musk’s close relationship with Trump, the president has long railed against electric vehicles, vowing to undo what he has described as President Biden’s EV “mandate.”
On his first day back in the Oval Office, Trump repealed an executive order signed by the former president that sought to ensure half of all new vehicles sold in the U.S. by 2030 were electric.
The Environmental Protection Agency has also issued a freeze on the disbursement of climate and EV-related funds from the Inflation Reduction Act, while the Transportation Department has suspended a $5 billion EV charger program.
