Honestly I think it depends if Trump stays in power above his current term (not here to argue whether or not its possible). But he knows he cannot collect billions of tax payers subsidies for EVs and then flip a switch and have factory producing Optimus bots. That 100% fraud, and only Trump will ignore it.
How is it fraud for a company to change focus and start producing other kinds of products? It's not fraud in the same way that promising that the car would be able to drive itself from Los Angeles to New York in 2017 and selling people "Full Self Driving Hardware" is.
Tesla single-handedly created the market for EVs. There are over 9 million Teslas on the road worldwide. That's a much bigger return on their subsidies than most government programs.
Have you forgotten about the Nissan Leaf? Tesla created the market for expensive sports car EVs, but Nissan made the market for EVs for the mainstream.
The Tesla Roadster came out first, by a couple years, but only sold about 2500 over its lifetime. By the time Tesla got its second model out, a couple years after Leaf went on sale, Leaf had 50k sales.
It took until 2020 for Tesla cumulative sales to catch up with Leaf cumulative sales.
Maybe that's true but maybe it also isn't? Tesla or no Tesla, China would've thrown incentives at domestic EV makers to reduce their dependence on oil imports. Without Tesla maybe there would be fewer EVs in North America and Europe today. But I don't see history playing out very differently elsewhere. The economics are just too strong.
Why would that be fraud? Is the subsidy something other than giving the people purchasing EVs a "rebate"?
A good lawyer could argue that Tesla must be aware that exiting the auto market would immediately crash the value of all existing Teslas because it would essentially create a sunset date for those vehicles, given how much software they're running. Good luck to anyone trying to sell a used Tesla once that announcement is made, because who would buy a car that is going to be bricked at some point?
How is that good lawyer going to make the case that Tesla should somehow be liable for this? Tesla doesn't owe any duty to keep resale values up.
> I think it depends if Trump stays in power above his current term (not here to argue whether or not its possible)
If that were to happen, we will not be caring at all about Tesla's choices, so I'm not sure how you can make such a statement and then claim there is no argument to be had.
The subsidies are things like emissions credits and tax credits for purchases. They applied to units already manufactured and sold. There's no conceivable case for fraud if they decide to stop making EVs.