- Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced on Tuesday he would turn his attention back to the electric vehicle maker but said he would likely still work in government as long as President Trump would have him. However, as a special government employee, Musk was only supposed to spend 130 days per year on government work. With about 36 weeks left in the year, Musk’s total time in the SGE role could potentially span 126 to 162 days.
Tesla investors have been begging Elon Musk to turn his focus back to the electric vehicle maker and execute on his lofty plans for self-driving fleets of taxis, humanoid robots, and unsupervised full-self driving technology. During an earnings call with analysts on Tuesday, Musk finally said he would oblige, and vowed to spend less time on the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and more time at Tesla, where he is the CEO.
“Probably starting next month, in May, my time allocation at DOGE will drop significantly,” Musk said. “I’ll have to continue doing it. I think we have the remainder of the President’s term just to make sure that the waste and fraud that we stopped does not come roaring back, which it’ll do if it has the chance.”
Musk said he would spend “a day or two per week on government matters for as long as the President would like me to do so, as long as it is useful.”
“But starting next month, I will be allocating far more of my time to Tesla now that the major work of establishing the Department of Government Efficiency is done,” Musk declared.
The Tesla CEO did not address the time limit on his work as a special government employee (SGE), however, which limits him to serving no more than 130 days within a 365-day period. But he will have to be judicious about how he allocates his Trump days in order to stay within the rules. With roughly 36 weeks left in the year, spending one or two days per week could potentially see Musk spend a total of 126 days to 162 days, given that he’s already spent about 90 days as an SGE thus far.
That designation allows Musk to serve in outside roles and on boards without making the public disclosures about his finances that would be required of a typical government worker. In addition to Tesla, Musk is also closely involved with a collection of privately-held companies he has founded including SpaceX, X, the Boring Company, Neuralink, and xAI. Typically CEOs and board members of companies resign their roles in the private sector before taking on assignments in government positions.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Despite the lack of clarity over Musk’s time assisting Trump, Tesla investors took his decision as a balm on the troubled automaker. Following Musk’s remarks—which generated news headlines around the country—after-hours trading in Tesla stock shot up more than 5%.
The bump came even as Tesla announced another disappointing quarter for investors, with tumbling operating income, net income, and operating margins. Revenues were down 9% to $19 billion although energy revenues were up 67% to $2.73 billion. Tesla also had a cash position of about $37 billion, up 38% year over year.
Tesla’s concerned stockholders
With hordes of retail shareholders in its stock, Tesla’s investor relations team takes questions in advance of its quarterly calls. Among the 161 questions submitted about Elon Musk himself, the top three largest retail shareholders asked about his role in government and what Tesla was doing to mitigate harm to the company.
“Boycotts, protests, vandalism, negative headlines, and a stock slide have been sparked by Elon Musk’s participation in changes to U.S. gov’t services & employment,” wrote a stockholder with about 88,000 shares. “Is the Tesla board discussing whether their CEO should focus fully on Tesla and leave gov’t to elected politicians?”
Another investor with 365,000 shares asked, “How is the company planning to deal with the impact of Elon’s partnership with the current administration?”
The third question with the most shares represented, also the third most-upvoted by other investors, asked: “With Elon’s involvement with the federal government the Tesla brand has been under attack, more so than usual. What steps are the company taking to alleviate these attacks and educate the public about the benefits of Tesla?”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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