U.S. plan to award $400M vehicle contract removes reference to Musk’s Tesla

The State Department planned to spend $400 million over the next five years on a contract to build armored electric vehicles with Telsa, whose chief executive Elon Musk has been advising President Donald Trump on how to slim federal spending, according to government documents.

The lucrative contract - which is projected to be awarded in September - published on the State Department’s website last year in accordance with transparency laws aimed at boosting competition in the government’s procurement process and was amended Wednesday to remove Tesla as a manufacturer.

After the website Drop Site News and other outlets reported on the possible contract going to a company owned by Musk, the document was updated to omit any reference to Tesla, changing the “Armored Tesla” contract instead to “Armored Electric Vehicles,” although the contract’s $400 million value remained the same. The potential contract was listed as being in the “planning” stage.

The original procurement forecast, which did not specify which of Tesla’s vehicle models could be purchased, is viewable online through the Wayback Machine.

A State Department spokesperson said the documents were a holdover from the last administration and no contract had been awarded to produce armored electric vehicles for the Department of State. “The solicitation is on hold and there are no current plans to issue it,” the spokesperson said. Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.

The potential Tesla contract was listed on procurement projections as early as December, according to the Wayback Machine, after Trump’s election but before he took office. The document describes itself as a “projection of contracting opportunities” and also includes three other potential contracts for armored vehicles, including one with BMW, that total $130 million.

The removal of the reference to Tesla in the disclosure added to the sharpened focus on the influential role played by Musk within the Trump administration.

“This is what they call efficiency?” asked Richard Painter, a law professor and former White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, in a post on X.

“Transparency is what builds trust,” Musk said Tuesday from the Oval Office, in response to a reporter’s question on whether he would disclose any potential conflicts of interest that arose from his role.

In a follow-up comment, Trump vowed to prevent Musk from playing a role in any area of government business that intersects with one of his companies. “If we thought that, we would not let him do that,” Trump said, adding that he valued Musk’s experience as a successful businessman.

This month the White House confirmed it had designated Musk as a “special government employee,” a status that exempts him from some of the rules - including around financial disclosures and conflicts of interest - that apply to full-time government employees.

Musk, who is the world’s richest man, spent at least $277 million backing Trump and other Republican candidates and has established himself at the heart of Trump’s inner orbit, embarking on a dramatic effort to diminish the federal government and gut its civilian workforce.

The U.S. DOGE Service led by Musk aims to reduce spending by government and diminish its role so that it offers fewer services and wields reduced oversight over private business. He has also said that he values transparency in the federal government’s spending decisions.

In recent weeks, aides at DOGE - short for Department of Government Efficiency - have generated chaos in government agencies by inserting themselves in leadership positions and eliminating jobs and programs at ideological odds with the administration. His team has sought access to sensitive data and upended operations in more than 18 federal agencies, initiated sweeping layoffs, and thrown fields including health research and agriculture into disarray.

Musk’s companies have won billions of dollars’ worth of government contracts in recent years. In 2021, Congress approved $5 billion in new spending to build a national EV charging network - tens of millions of which was awarded to Tesla - although the Trump administration suspended the program last week.