Tesla co-founder and CEO Elon Musk stands in front of the newly unveiled all-electric battery-powered Tesla’s Cybertruck at Tesla Design Center in Hawthorne, California on November 21, 2019. (Frederic J. Brown – AFP / Getty Images)
By Ben Zeisloft January 13, 2025 at 11:15am
Elon Musk announced that Tesla and SpaceX devoted resources and personnel to help victims of the Los Angeles fires as residents evacuate the region and lose homes.
Musk shared on Sunday evening via X that Tesla and SpaceX staffers are “driving around areas in greater LA/Malibu that are in tough shape with free WiFi, drinks & snacks.”
Tesla & SpaceX personnel are driving around areas in greater LA/Malibu that are in tough shape with free WiFi, drinks & snacks https://t.co/304vjlXSoc
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 13, 2025
He shared a post from Tesla that included a “summary of efforts” from the electric vehicle manufacturer to support employees and the community as a whole.
Those efforts turned out to be incredibly extensive.
Tesla is providing housing accommodations, transportation, and meals for employees who had their homes “lost or destroyed” amid the historic fires.
The company also managed to get all Supercharger sites back online “except [the] Pasadena Supercharger, which was in the middle of the fire.”
Beyond those responses, Tesla deployed two Megapack Chargers, which are essentially massive energy storage units that help with grid reliability, on Friday to “relieve congestion in Thousand Oaks for evacuation & families losing power due to Public Safety Power Shutoffs.”
The company deployed another unit the next day to Altadena “for first responder support, providing power & Starlink connectivity.”
Newsom has treated Musk terribly. Are you surprised Musk still sent help to those suffering in the LA area?
Tesla also sent two more Megapack Chargers to San Bernadino and are working to deploy more in the Palisades, the neighborhoods hit with the most destructive of the fires.
There are Mobile Powerwall Units “deployed with support” from third-party nonprofits in Altadena and Topanga Canyon to power devices and fridges, and there are multiple Cybertrucks throughout the city with Starlink enabled in Altadena, Pasadena, Zuma Beach, and Malibu.
Those Cybertrucks also have beds filled with water and snacks.
In other words, Tesla, SpaceX, and Musk have gone out of their way to take care of not only their own employees, but the region as a whole.
Musk did the same after hurricanes destroyed large parts of the southeastern United States a few months back.
But the efforts in California come despite some bad blood from the Democratic leadership of the state.
California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom introduced a plan in November that would offer rebates for electric vehicles, with the exception of Teslas, a move ripped by many as political retribution toward a billionaire political foe who aligned himself with the Republicans in recent years.
Musk called the exclusion of Tesla “insane,” especially because the company is the only car producer to make electric vehicles in the Golden State, according to a report from the New York Post.
In other words, California leaders turned their backs on Musk, but Musk did not turn his back on California.
Even as Newsom whines about his enemies politicizing the fires, Musk going out of his way to help the state is about as unpolitical a move as he possibly could have made.
Ben Zeisloft is the editor of The Republic Sentinel, a conservative news outlet owned and operated by Christians. He is a former staff reporter for The Daily Wire and has written for The Spectator, Campus Reform, and other conservative news outlets. Ben graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School with concentrations in business economics and marketing.
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