In Davos debut, Musk says US tariffs make solar power a challenge

By Muvija M, Deborah Mary Sophia and Akash Sriram

DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 22 (Reuters) – Elon Musk marked his last-minute Davos debut on Thursday with a critique of U.S. solar tariffs and aggressive targets for Tesla, including humanoid robot sales next year, as well as flagging European approval for self-driving tech within weeks.

After years of describing the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting as elitist, unaccountable and disconnected from ordinary people, the world’s richest man was interviewed by World Economic Forum interim co-chair Larry Fink.

The BlackRock CEO expressed his admiration for Musk at the start of the wide-ranging discussion, which covered the future of robots and AI, the economic benefits of reusable rockets and Musk’s childhood fascination with science fiction.

Musk has become more prominent in recent years, driven by his proximity to U.S. President Donald Trump and his stewardship of firms including Starlink-owner SpaceX, social media platform X and artificial intelligence startup, xAI.

Breaking ranks with Trump on renewable energy, Musk said the United States could produce enough solar power to meet all of its electricity needs, including booming demand from the proliferation of Big Tech’s power-hungry data centers.

“You could take a small corner of Utah, Nevada or New Mexico – a very small percentage of the area of the U.S. – to generate all of the electricity that the U.S. uses,” he added.

“Unfortunately, the tariff barriers for solar are extremely high and that makes the economics of deploying solar artificially high,” Musk said.

Trump has been openly critical of clean energy sources while encouraging oil majors to drill more for oil and gas. 

His freeze on approvals for major onshore wind and solar projects has left thousands of megawatts of capacity in limbo at a critical time for the U.S. as it rushes to secure enough power to meet soaring AI-driven requirements.

‘WE DON’T WANT TO BE IN TERMINATOR’

The interview did not touch on other major geopolitical and economic themes that have dominated the forum this week, including Trump’s ambitions for Greenland and Russia’s war in Ukraine, focusing instead on technology and robotics.

The pair joked about aliens, life on Mars and the “Terminator” film series.

“We need to be very careful with robotics. We don’t want to find ourselves in a James Cameron movie. Love his movies, but we don’t want to be in Terminator, obviously,” said Musk, referring to the fictional AI system from the “Terminator” films that becomes self-aware and turns on humanity.

Among the highest profile executives speaking at the Swiss mountain resort this week, Musk predicted robots will eventually outnumber humans, leading to a huge economic boom, and joked about traveling to Mars.

“People ask me do I want to die on Mars, and I’m like: ‘yes, but not on impact’,'” he said towards the end of the 30-minute session, drawing laughter from the audience.  

His appearance at Davos comes as governments and regulators from Europe to Asia crack down on sexually explicit content generated by his xAI chatbot Grok on X, launching probes, imposing bans and demanding safeguards, in a growing global push to curb illegal material.

(Reporting by Akash Sriram and Chandni Shah in Bengaluru; Editing by Alex Richardson, Saumyadeb Chakrabarty, Alexander Smith and Diane Craft)