Elon Musk marked his last-minute Davos debut with a critique of US solar tariffs and aggressive targets for Tesla, including humanoid robot sales next year, as well as flagging European approval for self-driving tech within weeks.
After years of describing the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting as elitist, unaccountable and disconnected from ordinary people, the world’s richest man was interviewed by World Economic Forum interim co-chair Larry Fink.
The BlackRock CEO expressed his admiration for Musk at the start of the wide-ranging discussion, which covered the future of robots and AI, the economic benefits of reusable rockets and Musk’s childhood fascination with science fiction.
Musk has become more prominent in recent years, driven by his proximity to US President Donald Trump and his stewardship of firms including Starlink-owner SpaceX, social media platform X and artificial intelligence startup, xAI.
Breaking ranks with Trump on renewable energy, Musk said the United States could produce enough solar power to meet all of its electricity needs, including booming demand from the proliferation of Big Tech’s power-hungry data centres.
“You could take a small corner of Utah, Nevada or New Mexico – a very small percentage of the area of the US – to generate all of the electricity that the US uses,” he added.
“Unfortunately, the tariff barriers for solar are extremely high and that makes the economics of deploying solar artificially high,” Musk said.
Trump has been openly critical of clean energy sources while encouraging oil majors to drill more for oil and gas.
His freeze on approvals for major onshore wind and solar projects has left thousands of megawatts of capacity in limbo at a critical time for the US as it rushes to secure enough power to meet soaring AI-driven requirements.
The interview did not touch on other major geopolitical and economic themes that have dominated the forum this week, including Trump’s ambitions for Greenland and Russia’s war in Ukraine, focusing instead on technology and robotics.
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