Yahoo Finance's Rick Newman details President Biden's administration meeting with Elon Musk and other EV executives, the EV space, and discussions surrounding EV charging infrastructure.

Video Transcript

- But the only place where Elon Musk has not been to this point invited is the White house, until now. Musk was part of a powerhouse group to meet with the Transportation Secretary, the Energy Secretary, among others, and the CEO of GM as well. Rick Newman, hopefully we'll get to the opening of a Tesla factory at some point. You're cool enough, Rick. We want to see you at the next factory opening. But meanwhile, what happened at the White House?

RICK NEWMAN: Well I didn't get invited to Austin so I'm not sure I am cool enough, but this was actually at the Transportation Department so this was not that big a deal. I think these types of meetings happen all the time. The CEO of GM and Ford and a bunch of other auto executives were there. I believe this was a virtual meeting. But Elon Musk was also included. That's unusual because President Biden has been talking a lot about electric vehicles, but most of the time he talks about Ford and GM and he almost never mentions Tesla, even though Tesla is by far the leading EV manufacturer here in the United States.

And I think the reason for that is pretty simple. Biden is a pro-union guy and Elon Musk is an anti-union guy, so he doesn't want to call attention to the leading EV company because it's not unionized. So maybe that rift is healing a little bit, although, in January, Musk did, on Twitter, call Biden a damp sock puppet. I'm not sure that's the way to ingratiate yourself with the president, but maybe they're somehow getting over that. At any rate, I don't think Biden was involved in this meeting yesterday, but the auto CEOs were.

- [LAUGHS]

OK, those are definitely fighting words for the President of the United States from Elon Musk. We do know that there's been more of an acceptance in trying to make sure that the experience across industries and how they're serving their customers further intertwines some of the ability for their customers to charge electric vehicles and so other industries are warming up. We saw Chase today announce that they're looking to add chargers to about 50 branches by the summer of 2023. What is the signal to you about the EV space and where other industries are going to continue to just get a little bit cozier to what's taking place in this inflection point?

RICK NEWMAN: Yeah. There actually is an important role for the government in all this. So, in a short statement, the Transportation Department said everybody in this meeting agreed that the EV charging network needs to be interoperable and seamless. And what they're talking about is there needs to be one standard for charging, and right now there are basically two standards. Tesla has one standard and every other EV operates on a different standard. So that's like having two different types of gasoline nozzles. Or, if you prefer, a gasoline nozzle for some vehicles and a diesel nozzle that doesn't fit into the gasoline hole for other vehicles.

And it would be simpler and more efficient if we had one standard, so that's probably what they were talking about there. You mentioned Chase is going to have some charging stations at about 50 branches. This is a pilot program to see if people actually use this. And I think, for sure, we're just going to see more of this because any big company that has real estate is a potential place for chargers and we just need a lot more chargers. And they don't have to be at dedicated charging stations.

They can be anywhere where they can be linked to the electrical grid, so we already see chargers in supermarket parking lots and things like that. So chase is trying to figure out, is this something we can make some money on and maybe offer a service to some of our customers at the same time. So my bet is it'll probably work and we'll probably see them at more. Chase has almost 5,000 branches, so this is just a wee little start.

- Yeah, it's really fascinating to continuously see the private sector try to fast track areas that the public sector is lagging behind, especially even on an infrastructure play for EVs like this. And we'll see what type of data comes of this test case in this rollout from Chase. Yahoo Finance's own Rick Newman. Rick, appreciate the breakdown here this afternoon.