‘Elon is sticking to his principles': Musk's father says Trump dispute triggered by stress
Errol Musk, Elon's father, highlighted the intense stress both sides faced over months and urged for an end to the public battle.
Trump warned of 'serious consequences' should Musk support Democrats, despite Musk's prior financial backing of Trump's 2024 campaign and collaboration on downsising government operations.
The dispute between Donald Trump and Elon Musk was triggered by months of intense stress on both sides, and the public battle between the US president and the billionaire donor needs to stop, Musk's father told Reuters on Monday.
Trump and Musk began exchanging insults last week on social media, with the Tesla and SpaceX CEO describing the president's sweeping tax and spending bill as a "disgusting abomination".
Asked whether he thought his son had made a mistake by engaging in a public clash with the president, Errol Musk said people were sometimes unable to think as clearly as they should "in the heat of the moment."
"They've had five months of intense stress," Musk told Reuters at a conference in Moscow organised by conservative Russian tycoons.
"With all the opposition cleared and two people left in the arena, all they have ever done is get rid of everything and now they are trying to get rid of each other - well that has to stop."
Asked how it would end, he said:
Oh, it will end on a good note - very soon.
Neither the White House nor Musk could be reached for comment outside normal US business hours.
Trump said on Saturday his relationship with Musk was over and that there would be "serious consequences" if the world's richest man decided to fund US Democrats running against Republicans who vote for the tax and spending bill.
Musk bankrolled a large part of Trump's 2024 presidential campaign. Trump named Musk to head an effort to downsize the federal workforce and slash spending.
Musk's father told reporters he was standing by his son.
"Elon is sticking to his principles but you cannot always stick to your principles in the real world," Musk's father said. "Sometimes you have to give and take."
Speaking beside sanctioned Russian businessman Konstantin Malofeyev, Musk's father praised President Vladimir Putin as a "very stable and pleasant man."
He accused "fake media" in the West of projecting "complete nonsense" about Russia and for casting it as an enemy.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Associated Press
4 minutes ago
- Associated Press
America's only rare earth producer gets a boost from Apple and Pentagon agreements
MP Materials, which runs the only American rare earths mine, announced a new $500 million agreement with tech giant Apple on Tuesday to produce more of the powerful magnets used in iPhones as well as other high-tech products like electric vehicles. This news comes on the heels of last week's announcement that the U.S. Defense Department agreed to invest $400 million in shares of the Las Vegas-based company. That will make the government the largest shareholder in MP Materials and help increase magnet production. Despite their name, the 17 rare earth elements aren't actually rare, but it's hard to find them in a high enough concentration to make a mine worth the investment. They are important ingredients in everything from smartphones and submarines to EVs and fighter jets, and it's those military applications that have made rare earths a key concern in ongoing U.S. trade talks. That's because China dominates the market and imposed new limits on exports after President Donald Trump announced his widespread tariffs. When shipments dried up, the two sides sat down in London. The agreement with Apple will allow MP Materials to further expand its new factory in Texas to use recycled materials to produce the magnets that make iPhones vibrate. The company expects to start producing magnets for GM's electric vehicles later this year and this agreement will let it start producing magnets for Apple in 2027. The Apple agreement represents a tenth of the company's pledge to invest $500 billion domestically during the Trump administration. And although the deal will provide a significant boost for MP Materials, the agreement with the Defense Department may be even more meaningful. Neha Mukherjee, a rare earths analyst with Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, said in a research note that the Pentagon's 10-year promise to guarantee a minimum price for the key elements of neodymium and praseodymium will guarantee stable revenue for MP Minerals and protect it from potential price cuts by Chinese producers that are subsidized by their government. 'This is the kind of long-term commitment needed to reshape global rare earth supply chains,' Mukherjee said. Trump has made it a priority to try to reduce American reliance on China for rare earths. His administration is both helping MP Materials and trying to encourage the development of new mines that would take years to come to fruition. China has agreed to issue some permits for rare earth exports but not for military uses, and much uncertainty remains about their supply. The fear is that the trade war between the world's two biggest economies could lead to a critical shortage of rare earth elements that could disrupt production of a variety of products. MP Materials can't satisfy all of the U.S. demand from its Mountain Pass mine in California's Mojave Desert. The deals by MP Materials come as Beijing and Washington have agreed to walk back on their non-tariff measures: China is to grant export permits for rare earth magnets to the U.S., and the U.S. is easing export controls on chip design software and jet engines. The truce is intended to ease tensions and prevent any catastrophic fall-off in bilateral relations, but is unlikely to address fundamental differences as both governments take steps to reduce dependency on each other. ___ Associated Press reporters David Klepper and Didi Tang contributed to this report from Washington D.C. Michael Liedtke contributed from San Francisco.
Motor Trend
6 minutes ago
- Motor Trend
The Future Of Porsche's Racing Tech Transfer to Street Cars? Software.
On April 12, 2025, Porsche made history, becoming the first automaker to win three classes of professional motorsports with three different powertrains on the same day. In California, a 963 hybrid won the LMDh class and took the overall win at the IMSA Long Beach Grand Prix while a 911 GT3 R won the GTD Pro class in the same race with pure combustion engine. Across the country, the 99X Electric won the Miami e-prix in Formula E on pure battery power. Different as they may be, each shares a common link with the Porsche road cars you can buy today and in the future. Porsche uses motorsport to drive tech innovation, focusing on software as the key to improving road cars. Software impacts drivability and efficiency, with lessons from racing series shared across projects. This approach is cost-effective and enhances both performance and development. This summary was generated by AI using content from this MotorTrend article Read Next Racing Technology for the Street 'We have a philosophy that, yes, motorsport is part of our DNA,' Porsche vice president of motorsport, Thomas Laudenbach, told MotorTrend , 'and I cannot imagine Porsche without motorsport, but we are not doing motorsport for the sake of its own. We do motorsport to give a contribution to the company, and this is exactly what we are talking about.' In the past, tech transfer from racing to the road consisted mostly of more power and better aerodynamics, but as everything on a car has become linked and controlled by computers, the next frontier is in the software that controls them. Hard parts like engines, suspension, and aerodynamics are fairly mature technologies, but automotive software is still in its relative infancy. 'It is still a very steep curve,' Laudenbach said. 'It's growing so fast, it's changing so fast…I mean, if you look at the combustion engine, obviously development [today] is slower like this because you know, it is more and more difficult to make the [next] step. If you look at the software, not only software itself, how we approach it, the tools…I would say [it is] still very steep, the curve, how fast it changes.' It's All in the Software In all three racing series, physical parts on the cars are heavily regulated, particularly when it comes to batteries and electric motors. Software, though, isn't and has become the most important factor in improving lap times and efficiency. 'Everything you can do on the software has a much bigger impact and a much bigger effect in the drivability,' Porsche Formula E driver and reigning champion, Pascal Wehrlein, told MotorTrend , 'because yeah, there's also software things in in a combustion engine, but the effect is just smaller than an electric car. We pay a lot of attention to the software and I would say that is our biggest toolbox for setting up the car and getting quicker and so on. And there's just so many more things you can do on the software compared to a combustion engine. 'How much we are going into the details,' he continued, 'into the smallest details, I would say on the software side is even more than what I did when I was in Formula One, just because there are so many different options on, you know, the four-wheel drive, how to set up the four-wheel drive. How much work do you want to have at the front? At which point in time in the corner you want to have more front torque or less? What you can do on the braking side, on the [energy] recuperation, setting it up for different corners? In certain corners, where it's high speed, you need something different than in the low-speed corner, but then also when the track is bumpy, or not bumpy. We are going so much into the details.' Lauderbach agrees. 'It's absolutely right. We always love about talking about hardware. And I did develop combustion engines for 18 years, so I'm a real mechanical guy, and it's absolutely right, probably the bigger part is software. And but this is the good thing about it because some things [physical] we are not allowed to touch [under the regulations]. But we have a big freedom of software, and I think that's good because racing should give freedom where it is beneficial also for your brand. And that's certainly in software and I think this is probably also the biggest change between the projects.' Because the applications are so different, it's not as simple as just sharing code between teams in different series or with the engineers working on the road cars. Instead, it's the exchange of knowledge and ideas which brings this tech to cars like the 911 GTS T-hybrid. 'It's for sure not a carryover part,' Laudenbach said, 'but it's from learning about the difficulties, about the weak points, about the solutions, for sure they benefit from each other. 'When you have more than one project,' he said, 'you just work it on in a wider range and then you always find synergy. These two programs (Formula E and LMDh) benefit from each other in various areas. And at the same time, this is linked so close to our road car development. We work a lot on road cars as well in the motorsport department and do benefit from each other. If you tell your engineers, oh, please sit together with these guys from this program, then you know what they do? They sit together for an hour, they chat, and they go to it. If you sit side by side, if you meet each other with a coffee, this is the best way to benefit from each other. These two programs benefit, but also this is very beneficial to what we do on road cars, even inside the motorsport department.' It's not just about making the cars faster, either. Power makes heat, and heat needs to be dealt with before it breaks things, on a race car or a road car. Efficiency matters in racing because using less fuel or electricity allows you to go farther between pit stops, and it matters for the same reason on the street. 'Look at Formula E,' Laudenbach said. 'It's not our battery, but we control the thermal system [and] energy management. That's a lot of control systems. That's a lot of software. I mean, if we work with AI in the meantime and there you can learn a lot of the one side and transfer it to the other. Sometimes then you figure out that, okay, I can only take this because this [other technology] is not allowed. It's never carry over one to one. 'But you still learn a lot about how to handle it. It's software functions, it's control systems, it's sometimes also just the tools that we use, the approach that you take is not always [about] the final product. In the end, you have the product, there, no matter if it's software, hardware, but it's also, how do you approach it, because you're always looking for being most efficient. Especially Formula E, [where] we have a cost cap. It's a factor to say, okay, can I reach a certain goal with the smallest amount of money? These kind of things we always exchange because it's in the background.' Cheaper and Easier Not only are software learnings easier to transfer between programs, software is also easier to iterate on and less expensive to develop. 'Compared to hardware,' he said, 'it's not that cost intensive. Yes, you have you have the labor. But you know, you' not always having to change your bits and pieces. And don't forget, if you talk about bits and pieces, you always have to stop and throw parts away. So it's a lot more, let's say, cost efficient.' Whether in the office or trackside, the way data is managed and analyzed has changed a lot in the past decade. 'If we would do it like 10 years ago,' Lauderbach said, 'where the engineer himself goes through all the raw data, that doesn't work anymore. You got to feed your data through automatic analysis. It's just more [a question of], how do you analyze? How do you get something out in order to make the car quicker? This is a lot more or this is high sophisticated, a lot more automation and algorithms, than 10 years ago. 'It's a software basically to calculate what the car's doing because you got sensors. Obviously, you want to calculate some figures, you see what the car's doing in order to feature simulations. The simulation then gives you back again in which direction you have to go.'
Motor Trend
7 minutes ago
- Motor Trend
Rivian Is Integrating Google Maps Into Its Native Navigation Software
Fresh off major upgrades to its R1S SUV and R1T pickup, Rivian is now set to launch a software update of its onboard navigation system to include Google Maps data—both for the new vehicles it's producing and its existing customer cars. This isn't simply Google Maps like the app on your phone, however. Leveraging Google's Automotive SDK, Rivian has, in effect, overlaid its existing navigation experience over that of Google Maps, taking advantage of the internet giant's superior "routing, estimated time of arrivals, traffic updates, search capabilities, and satellite imagery," as Rivian put it, in order to further augment its own in-house "EV-friendly navigation features." Rivian is updating its R1S SUV and R1T pickup navigation systems to integrate Google Maps, blending Google's routing, traffic, and imagery with Rivian's EV-specific features. The update includes a new interface and extends to the Rivian Mobile App, rolling out starting tomorrow. This summary was generated by AI using content from this MotorTrend article Read Next In other words, Rivian's navigation system will now blend Google's superior mapping capabilities with its proprietary charging information, including estimated range and battery capacity remaining at your destination, route planning, real-time charging info, and more. In addition, Rivian skins the whole interface in its own design, a new version of which will also debut with the Google Maps update. Even better, Rivian says the update will extend to its Rivian Mobile App (a 2025 MotorTrend Best Tech award winner), which benefits from Google-like photos and descriptions of searched destinations, as well as satellite map views and real-time traffic data. As before, users can send trips and navigation destinations from the app to their Rivians, and now they'll be able to use the "share" function via Google Maps to do the same. The rollout of the new Google-augmented system is imminent—Rivian says it'll begin doing so as soon as tomorrow via an over-the-air update for every all-electric R1S SUV and R1T pickup it has sold to date, and it will come already equipped with every new model it sells.
