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Tesla (TSLA), DOGE, and the road forward.

The 2024 presidential election is a day away, and with both candidates polling closely, speculation about a second Trump administration now heavily involves Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Specifically, if Musk will head up Trump’s proposed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

If that happens, “I think he will still be heavily involved with [Tesla],” Bank of America senior auto analyst John Murphy told Yahoo Finance executive editor Brian Sozzi on Yahoo Finance's Opening Bid podcast (see video above; listen below).

Musk most recently participated in the Trump rally that took place at New York City’s Madison Square Garden. He has continued to put out pro-Trump posts on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter that he owns.

Trump’s proposed department holds a bit of that Musk/Trump folklore because its acronym and the ticker for dogecoin (DOGE-USD) are the same. Dogecoin is the ninth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, according to Yahoo Finance data, and a favorite of Musk's.

The former president recently shared plans to create a department that would “eliminate fraud and improper payments” with a six month timeline to complete the tasks. The department could be run by Musk.

In response, Musk shared on X that he would do the job with “no pay, no title, no recognitions needed.” He said close to $2 trillion in costs could be stripped out of government, though critics have disputed whether that level of cost-cutting is possible without disrupting benefits to Social Security and Medicare.

However, if Musk were to take the position, it would raise questions about the fate of Tesla.

“If there is a change in the White House and Trump wins and Elon goes to run the DOGE, who is his No. 2 at Tesla?” Murphy said. “I don’t think there’s really a No. 2 that I could point to that would replace him or really could replace him.”

The company's most recent beta projects in autonomous cars and humanoid robots have continued to evolve. Tesla most recently shared that a fleet of driverless vehicles should begin to hit markets as soon as 2025 or 2026.

Tesla stock has surged over 1,000% over the past five years. Musk not seeing these projects through could initially unsettle the faithful bulls that have long championed Tesla's stock.

“The other side of the equation of the opportunity [with] Elon getting involved in the government, you could run national regulations on autonomy,” said Murphy.