Armored Teslas to State
The press is blowing up over a $400,000,000 contract to provide armored Teslas. Should be an easy win – didn’t Elon swear that the truck’s windows were bullet-proof?
Elon Musk was blasted Wednesday following revelations that the Trump administration plans to spend $400 million on “armored” Teslas in what’s reportedly the State Department’s biggest contract of 2025.
The contract was revealed even as the tech billionaire and Donald Trump “best buddy” is deeply embedded in the same federal government granting the contract as Musk peruses Treasury Department pay systems and can presumably examine information about rival contractors in what would appear to be a glaring conflict of interest.
Gotta watch those little gotcha words….like “presumably” . “Maybe, we have no proof whatsoever, but if we use this as a disclaimer we can allege anything.” Dictionary definition for that word, right?
The contract is due to be finalized in the fourth quarter and is currently in the “planning” phase, according to the document.
After reports of the news Wednesday the online forecast about the contract was edited to remove the word “Tesla” and simply referred to $400 million worth of “armored electric vehicles.”
Because there are so many other American electric car companies capable of filling a contract like that in the time span allotted. Or do we want to go to, say, Chinese Geely or BYD?
The news comes as the world’s richest man’s rocket company, SpaceX, is still receiving multi-million dollar contract payouts from the U.S. government as he continues to gut federal funding elsewhere through his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).The Independent
True, they could use Boeing instead. We’ve seen how well THEIR space craft work (and yes, the stranded astronauts are still ‘up there’).
Pretty sure more than one reader has done some procurement…ah, maybe better to say purchasing – before. How long does a government contract take? Write the Request for Quote, review process, solicit quotes, more reviews, add some governmental inefficiency, award, delay to start date – all easily done in the 24 days since Trump took office? all part of Trump’s famous push for green vehicles? Oh wait, that was Biden…
Brings to mind a bit of Holocaust history – a young girl named Hana was sent to Terezin (Therezienstadt for those who prefer German), by the Germans in WWII. She was classified as an ‘orphan’ – by the same Germans who had killed her parents already. (If you want to read more about that, do a search for “Hana’s Suitcase” – heck of a story.)
Oh, and a reminder – if you have forgotten Valentine’s Day and your significant other cares about it – ya still have time to go grab a card. Expect to pay yer left nut for flowers, though.
Category: "Teh Stoopid", "Your Tax Dollars At Work"
The Tesla contract was setup under prior admin, Biden I believe.
All sorts of oddball contracts are now coming to light. More sunlight, please.
“More sunlight, please”
So you’re one of those solar farm nuts?
Yeah, I know that’s not what you meant but I couldn’t resist.
Paper shredder sales are doing pretty good lately I’ll bet.
Talk about shredders, how about the bird cereal called
shredded tweet.
Left out of the Yahoo linked news story on the post but mentioned in the NPR story if one were to click through all the hyperlinks.
“The Tesla contract started in the Biden administration “to explore interest from private companies to produce armored electric vehicles,” a State Department spokesperson said on Thursday.
Tesla was the only company to express interest in the department’s request at the time.”
And the original RFI on SAM.gov
https://sam.gov/opp/bb1ac5870df5485ab090216dc8fe0511/view
Typical approach by the legacy media – attention grabbing headline that sets the narrative and assume your readers are too stupid to look into the details themselves.
Yep, and as we saw yesterday, swallowed hook, line and sinker by our resident seagull..
Yeah, Rachel Maddow went all in exposing the “collusion” between Elon Musk and Donald Trump, completely omitting the fact that this project was launched under the Biden-Harris Administration, who never met a Green New Deal that they couldn’t line their donor’s pockets with taxpayer money.
Full disclosure, Hack Stone does not watch Rachel Maddow, but catches her(?) highlights on Fox News.
Armored electric vehicles are a stupid idea. Weight is the nemesis of EV range and utility.
It’s such a stupid idea, that I already assumed it was Biden-era plan.
I’d also love to know what the plan was for these. If these are at our embassies,… for who? And where? Most locations don’t have extensive charging networks, and if the idea is secure transport, you also want to blend in – Cybertrucks don’t, especially abroad.
I’m fully aware this was planned during the Biden Administration, but surely this should be a target for elimination because it’s wasteful, no?
Without question it should LC.
Embassy vehicles don’t blend in. They are also easy to target because they are leaving the embassy or on their way there.
Electric vehicles have big advantages in a grid down situation if you are able to generate your own electricity say with solar or a generator. Currently the US has more than a dozen embassies around the world that generate their own power with solar and practically all of them have generators. So if fuel suddenly was in short supply they would be in a good position.
Not sure if the contract is wasteful because no one else.bid on it. In most non-net oil exporting countries around the world electricity is often much cheaper than gasoline for ground propulsion. Teslas also have the lowest vehicle maintenance costs of any vehicle made anywhere in the world. So it well could be cheaper than running an ICE vehicle in say Hong Kong where gas is $12.50 a gallon.
EV vehicles are already heavier than a similar size and type of iCE vehicle. The heavier chassis on the ugly cyber truck would be plenty to handle up armoring. The stainless steel panels on the vehicle are already resistant to II levels that defeat normal power 9mm and other low powered handgun rounds. It won’t stop magnum rounds, 5.7 and similar higher powered hand gun and rifle rounds.
The windows on the Tesla are “Armored Glass”. This is not ballistic glass and is only a bit more shatter and break resistant than regular auto window glass. It won’t stop bullets, buckshot or even a heavy metal ball. Depending upon the level it wouldn’t be difficult to fit Level II or IIIa glass to the windows. Anything beyond that.would likely be prohibitive.
Call me crazy, but all these contracts should be examined ON THE MERITS. Is there an actual need? Does the contract meet the need in the most efficient and effective way possible? If the answer to both is yea, the. The contracts should move forward. If not, they should be shitcanned.. seems.fairly straightforward to me..
I’m going to disagree on a number of grounds.
“Need” is a relative term. According to the last administration illegal aliens “needed” housing and FEMA paid for it. A plane ride home would have been cheaper but they didn’t “need” that. FEMA spent money that wasn’t “needed” until it was needed and then they didn’t have it. The people that did need it couldn’t get it because FEMA couldn’t get to where they needed to be.
When you balance the needs of a diplomatic missions versus the most efficient way then it makes sense to buy them all Toyota Priuses and let them drive themselves. But the US Government isn’t going to buy a fleet of Japanese cars for the State Department. This has nothing to do with efficiency or effectiveness.
And here I’ll disagree a bit. your comment about buying priuses and letting them drive themselves, in my opinion wouldn’t be efficient, and definitely not effective, for a number of reasons, security not the least of them. Then again, in one of your other posts just above, you make solid points (insane gas prices, availability of on-site solar in unstable regions) as to why EV’s WOULD be effective and efficient in those situations, along with the low maint. cost of Teslas ( was not aware of that aspect).
As long as they don’t utilize the fire truck seeking auto-drive feature (look up the number of times auto-drive Teslas have crashed in to parked Emergency Vehicles), I would have no problem with them being utilized in such situations.
I’ll admit, maybe “need” wasn’t the best word, but in my world, anytime you’re looking to address an issue, you do a needs assessment, then move forward to find a solution that best addresses that need.
I’m more than happy with an alternate if it better describes the situation, but I stand behind my point, that we (the govt) should be making the best decision possible, based on all relevant data.
I never argued that the Prius was an effective way to carry out the diplomatic missions, merely efficient. However it highlights the problem of balance and how everyone that is a stake holder has input and wants to pull it a particular way.
The perfect solution is seldom obvious and rarely known before it is implemented and done. Imperfections OTOH are easy to point out.
Agree 100% with your final statement, and I dint mean to imply that you said it was an effective way ( actually, I took it as you implying exactly the oppostie), I was just pointing out that it needs to meet both criteria, which as you say is much harder to do.
I’m no mechanical or electrical engineer, but it seems like a bad idea to build an up-armored vehicle directly on top of a yuge Li-ion battery. You’re essentially building a blast furnace on top of an incendiary device.
So you are saying it makes more sense to build it on top of 20 gallons of gasoline? I know the military uses diesel which is a little better because it is unlikely to explode but it sure burns like crazy.
Self-sealing/self-extinguishing gas tanks were a big part of the survivability of our WW2 fighters and bombers. Those folks were often carrying quite a bit of very high octane gasoline. (150-200).
It is -vastly- harder to damage-proof a lithium-ion battery pack. An impact-level deceleration of the vehicle can breach cells and start a runaway. .30 AP, or better yet API, from a Garand rifle can easily light up an EV. Even 5.56 green tip AP or red tip tracer is a significant hazard.
Ruggedized LiMH has far lower output. Huge tradeoff.
We are decades away from combat-survivable EVs that match current ICE options. (Say a nicely appointed IIIa armored diesel SUV running on JP8)
Why the gap? Because we have over a century of experience with Grunts and related yahoos breaking ICE stuff.
EV fires are much worse and more common than gas/diesel vehicles.
I have heard horror stories from first responder friends. None of them will ever buy an EV
Hell, it only took from 1942 (the hybrid-powered Tiger I prototype, which caught fire in front of Hitler who went with a conventional gas-powered version) to 2008 (the Future Combat System’s 155mm self-propelled howitzer) to have a hybrid-propulsion combat vehicle ready for production– 66 years. EVs might take that long.
I’d say it’s better to be sitting on gasoline, only because it’s a hell of a lot easier to extinguish. The earth-shattering kaboom gas tank explosions only happen in Michael Bay movies.
Gas tanks kinda go “Whoof” in a lazy way.
Now, a tire cooking off in a fire can get spicy. That produces a very nice “boom”.
Yup! I’ve seen that one. Brake fire on a 15kw generator. No, the parking brake wasn’t on, spring broke on the shoes and eventually set the inside dual alight. Helluva boom!
You usually don’t see the actual car company on the agreement (aka Contract) for the armored vehicles. Typically the Company doing the up armor has a separate agreement with the automaker to purchase them at dealer rates and then puts on the armor kit. Which can include stiffening chassis and upgrading the suspension.
I would be really surprised that Tesla itself is doing the armoring. Maybe a subsidiary specifically spun off to to the engineering and armor kit crafting.
Depending on the size of the purchase, it takes anywhere from 90 days, to two or more years for a purchase contract to work its way through the system. Especially if a prototype is asked for, to compete.
This is important to the mechanic because the 2025 model armored pick-up truck might have been built on a 2024 model regular pick-up truck. Many are the times parts for ambulances, line-trucks, ramp-vehicles, etc were ordered and returned because the troops ordering the parts didn’t know they needed the previous year’s parts.
As to Valentine’s Day, this year give her outdated overpriced Red Hat Software.
Walmart has a dozen roses in a vase by the front door for $24.99. At least they did last night. Don’t know about today.
I love Walmart front door sales. They know what people are
looking for. Lately it’s been automotive dry gas in a four pak
and windshield washer fluid.
Don’t know about today.
speaking of roses, how about the song “Blue Flowers”
by the Strangers, 1954 on the King record label out of Fort Greene Brooklyn NY. Great fallsetto background
Just drop the fucking contract and move on.
“Orange Man Bad!” “Nobody voted for Elon!” “Trump and Musk BOTH colluded with the Ruskkies to delete 30K emails and smash phones.” “Impeach Trump for…reasons!” “Deport Musk…he’s taking jobs away from hardworking Boeing employees!”
FFS, give me a break. Seems like several of us have commented that the sleaze media and domestic enemies of our Republic had not given up and would continue their march for maintaining their control over We, The People. We mighta won a battle back in November, but the war continues. Prepare…
Now, I’m not gonna debate whether or not an EV is better than an ICE for up armoring. As pointed out by others, in some locations of the world there would be some advantages. In others…not so much. How much range is needed for a “Diplomatic” vehicle? I would doubt that said vehicle would go far enough in one trip to drain the battery. The FACT remains is the contract was awarded during the previous admin and NOBODY else bid on it. And as far as Space X is concerned…Hey, their sh*t works and we are no longer so dependent on the Russkkies for transport to ISS.
I quote/paraphrase the latest meme going around in re Musk exposing the pure waste and graft going on in grubermint (rad taxpayer’s money) giveaways…”Instead of being mad at Musk for exposing it, get mad at the parasites that have been stealing from We, The People.”
Issues with the contract? Fine, cancel the damn thing and move along. 400 million $s is a rounding error for grubermint spending and “walking around” $ for Musk.
I love the sound of Leftroid sobbing. Sounds like Victory!
Hopefully they will figure out a way to hold electrons in a jerry can.
Armour would chew through battery power on already very heavy vehicles.