Musk’s DOGE agency slashes Tesla watchdog
Tensions in the US have erupted after Elon Musk made sweeping cuts to a government department in which he has a huge conflict of interest.
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has come under fire for sweeping job cuts at the government agency tasked with making sure cars, including those made by Tesla, are safe.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is a government body that crash-tests cars, compels companies to issue safety recalls and investigates vehicle flaws – including widely reported shortcomings in Tesla’s “Autopilot” driver assistance technology.
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The safety group has had resources slashed in a cost-cutting move slammed as “corrupt” by politicians opposed to the Trump Administration.
Connecticut Democratic Senator Chris Murphy said Musk’s DOGE department should not make decisions that affect his business interests.
“Your morning reminder this is all a corrupt grift,” he said on X.
“Musk is firing 50 per cent of the office that regulates the self driving cars he makes and sells.
“Those that remain will serve at the pleasure of the guy they are supposed to be regulating.”
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Missy Cummings, a former NHTSA official, told the Associated Press in February that “Musk wants to run the Department of Transportation”.
“I’ve lost count of the number of investigations that are underway with Tesla. They will all be gone.”
Musk has previously described safety bodies as the “fun police” on Twitter, and said the policy of framing software updates as safety recalls was “flat wrong”.
NHTSA recently announced a five-star safety rating for Tesla’s Cybertruck electric vehicle.
The safety body previously reported that Tesla’s “Autopilot” was linked to more than 460 crashes resulting in dozens of injuries and 14 deaths.
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NHTSA has also investigated self-driving car tech offered by Ford, Amazon’s Zoox, Google’s Waymo, and other companies.
Significant cuts to the department tasked with examining autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles could make it harder for the government to hold Tesla and other car makers to account.
Employees recently made redundant told the Washington Post that “it was just very jarring to go from saving lives one day to being locked out of your computer the next”.
“If the question is, will this affect the federal government’s ability to understand the safety case behind Tesla’s vehicles, then yes, it will,” one former employee told the Post.
“The amount of people in the federal government who are able to understand this adequately is very small. Now it’s almost non-existent.”
A letter signed by US politicians including Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal said “the Trump administration risks undermining decades of safety improvements” and that “we urge you to cease this dangerous approach to governing”.
It said “the Trump administration promotes cost-cutting over protecting the public”.
Originally published as Musk’s DOGE agency slashes Tesla watchdog
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