Jay Leno: Elon Musk deserves 'a lot of credit' for leading EV charge
Comedian and car collector extraordinaire Jay Leno hasn’t seen a four-wheeler or even two-wheeler he doesn’t like.
The man has a collection of over 200 cars and bikes at his garage outside of Los Angeles as proof, but has shown a particular interest in recent years in electric vehicles (EVs), which he said was partially sparked by Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk.
"I think he should get a certain amount of credit for leading the charge because before Elon, [people would say] 'it's a golf cart,'" Leno told Yahoo Finance. "People would joke about electric [that] they're slow and whatever it might be. So I give him a lot of credit for it. I think EV will be the savior of the classic car industry."
Leno, whose show Jay Leno's Garage is entering its 7th season this September, has owned a Tesla Model S for many years, and it's the only car he has ever sold from his collection. (He only sold that to pick up a brand new Tesla Model S plaid.)
His interest in the EV space spans back to 2007, when Musk visited Leno's garage with his Roadster prototype.
"I remember sitting and he said: 'Well, what I want to do is build charging stations all up and down the coast,'" Leno recalled. "And I'm going 'ok, that'll happen, that sounds good.'"
Leno was skeptical at the time, as only a handful of electric cars were on the road, like the GM EV1 and Honda Insight EV Plus. The concept of building a charging network seemed somewhat incomprehensible.
According to U.S. News & World Report, there are over 31,000 individual Tesla charging points around the world spread across nearly 3,500 Tesla Supercharger stations, as of 2021. Roughly one-third of those stations are scattered throughout the U.S. across all 50 states.
"He started building the infrastructure almost at the exact time he started building the car," Leno said. "When the car debuted, you could drive LA to San Francisco. And now, you can go anywhere in the country. You see a lot of other automakers get into the EV market saying you can charge it anywhere. You can't really."
Fifteen years have gone by since that conversation in the garage and now nearly every traditional automaker has an ambitious EV transformation plan. On top of that, President Biden recently signed the Inflation Reduction Act that will extend federal tax credits for Americans who are looking to buy reasonably priced EVs.
As for Leno, his interest in EVs spans beyond Tesla — he also strongly believes regular Americans will buy Ford’s (F) new F-150 Lightning electric pickup as it becomes available.
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Pras Subramanian is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. You can follow him on Twitter and on Instagram.
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