General Motors CEO Mary Barra said in a new interview on Wednesday that she told President Joe Biden to credit Tesla and its CEO, Elon Musk, for the widespread electric vehicle transition.

She said she told Biden this after the former President credited her and GM for leading EV efforts in the United States.

During an interview at the New York Times Dealbook Summit with Andrew Ross Sorkin, Barra said she told Biden that crediting her was essentially a mistake, and that Musk and Tesla should have been explicitly mentioned (via Business Insider):

“He was crediting me, and I said, ‘Actually, I think a lot of that credit goes to Elon and Tesla…You know me, Andrew. I don’t want to take credit for things.”

GM CEO Mary Barra said to Andrew Sorkin at the New York Times Dealbook Summit that she pulled President Biden aside and said Tesla CEO @elonmusk deserved the credit for EVs:

“He was crediting me, and I said, ‘Actually, I think a lot of that credit goes to Elon and Tesla,’” Barra… pic.twitter.com/OHBTG1QfbJ

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— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) December 3, 2025

Back in 2021, President Biden visited GM’s “Factory Zero” plant in Detroit, which was the centerpiece of the company’s massive transition to EVs. The former President went on to discuss the EV industry, and claimed that GM and Barra were the true leaders who caused the change:

“In the auto industry, Detroit is leading the world in electric vehicles. You know how critical it is? Mary, I remember talking to you way back in January about the need for America to lead in electric vehicles. I can remember your dramatic announcement that by 2035, GM would be 100% electric. You changed the whole story, Mary. You did, Mary. You electrified the entire automotive industry. I’m serious. You led, and it matters.”

People were baffled by the President’s decision to highlight GM and Barra, and not Tesla and Musk, who truly started the transition to EVs. GM, Ford, and many other companies only followed in the footsteps of Tesla after it started to take market share from them.

Elon Musk and Tesla try to save legacy automakers from Déjà vu

Musk would eventually go on to talk about Biden’s words later on:

“They have so much power over the White House that they can exclude Tesla from an EV Summit. And, in case the first thing, in case that wasn’t enough, then you have President Biden with Mary Barra at a subsequent event, congratulating Mary for having led the EV revolution.”

In Q4 2021, which was shortly after Biden’s comments, Tesla delivered 300,000 EVs. GM delivered just 26.

Tesla Optimus showed off its newest capability as progress on the project continues to accelerate toward an ultimate goal of mass production in the coming years.

Tesla is still developing Optimus and preparing for the first stages of mass production, where units would be sold and shipped to customers. CEO Elon Musk has always marketed the humanoid robot as the biggest product in history, even outside of Tesla, but of all time.

He believes it will eliminate the need to manually perform monotonous tasks, like cleaning, mowing the lawn, and folding laundry.

However, lately, Musk has revealed even bigger plans for Optimus, including the ability to relieve humans of work entirely within the next 20 years.

JUST IN: Elon Musk says working will be ‘optional’ in less than 20 years because of AI and robotics. pic.twitter.com/l3S5kl5HBB

— Watcher.Guru (@WatcherGuru) November 30, 2025

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Development at Tesla’s Artificial Intelligence and Robotics teams has progressed, and a new video was shown of the robot taking a light jog with what appeared to be some pretty natural form:

Just set a new PR in the lab pic.twitter.com/8kJ2om7uV7

— Tesla Optimus (@Tesla_Optimus) December 2, 2025

Optimus has also made several public appearances lately, including one at the Neural Information Processing Systems, or NeurIPS Conference. Some spectators shared videos of Optimus’s charging rig, as well as its movements and capabilities, most interestingly, the hand:

You have to hand it to Elon 🤟 pic.twitter.com/fZKDlmGAbe

— Ric Burton · NeurIPS 2025 (@_ricburton) December 2, 2025

The hand, forearm, and fingers have been one of the most evident challenges for Tesla in recent times, especially as it continues to work on its 3rd Generation iteration of Optimus.

Musk said during the Q3 Earnings Call:

“I don’t want to downplay the difficulty, but it’s an incredibly difficult thing, especially to create a hand that is as dexterous and capable as the human hand, which is incredible. The human hand is an incredible thing. The more you study the human hand, the more incredible you realize it is, and why you need four fingers and a thumb, why the fingers have certain degrees of freedom, why the various muscles are of different strengths, and fingers are of different lengths. It turns out that those are all there for a reason.”

The interesting part of the Optimus program so far is the fact that Tesla has made a lot of progress with other portions of the project, like movement, for example, which appears to have come a long way.

However, without a functional hand and fingers, Optimus could be rendered relatively useless, so it is evident that it has to figure this crucial part out first.

Elon Musk said in late November that he’s “tried to warn” legacy automakers and “even offered to license Tesla Full Self-Driving, but they don’t want it,” expressing frustration with companies that refuse to adopt the company’s suite, which will eventually be autonomous.

Tesla has long established itself as the leader in self-driving technology, especially in the United States. Although there are formidable competitors, Tesla’s FSD suite is the most robust and is not limited to certain areas or roadways. It operates anywhere and everywhere.

The company’s current position as the leader in self-driving tech is being ignored by legacy automakers, a parallel to what Tesla’s position was with EV development over a decade ago, which was also ignored by competitors.

The reluctance mirrors how legacy automakers initially dismissed EVs, only to scramble in catch-up mode years later–a pattern that highlights their historical underestimation of disruptive innovations from Tesla.

Elon Musk’s Self-Driving Licensing Attempts

Musk and Tesla have tried to push Full Self-Driving to other car companies, with no true suitors, despite ongoing conversations for years. Tesla’s FSD is aiming to become more robust through comprehensive data collection and a larger fleet, something the company has tried to establish through a subscription program, free trials, and other strategies.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk sends rivals dire warning about Full Self-Driving

However, competing companies have not wanted to license FSD for a handful of speculative reasons: competitive pride, regulatory concerns, high costs, or preference for in-house development.

Déjà vu All Over Again

Tesla tried to portray the importance of EVs long ago, as in the 2010s, executives from companies like Ford and GM downplayed the importance of sustainable powertrains as niche or unprofitable.

Musk once said in a 2014 interview that rivals woke up to electric powertrains when the Model S started to disrupt things and gained some market share. Things got really serious upon the launch of the Model 3 in 2017, as a mass-market vehicle was what Tesla was missing from its lineup.

This caused legacy companies to truly wake up; they were losing market share to Tesla’s new and exciting tech that offered less maintenance, a fresh take on passenger auto, and other advantages. They were late to the party, and although they have all launched vehicles of their own, they still lag in two major areas: sales and infrastructure, leaning on Tesla for the latter.

I’ve tried to warn them and even offered to license Tesla FSD, but they don’t want it! Crazy …

When legacy auto does occasionally reach out, they tepidly discuss implementing FSD for a tiny program in 5 years with unworkable requirements for Tesla, so pointless. 🤷‍♂️

🦕 🦕

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 24, 2025

Musk’s past warnings have been plentiful. In 2017, he responded to critics who stated Tesla was chasing subsidies. He responded, “Few people know that we started Tesla when GM forcibly recalled all electric cars from customers in 2003 and then crushed them in a junkyard,” adding that “they would be doing nothing” on EVs without Tesla’s efforts.

Companies laughed off Tesla’s prowess with EVs, only to realize they had made a grave mistake later on.

It looks to be happening once again.

A Pattern of Underestimation

Both EVs and self-driving tech represent major paradigm shifts that legacy players view as threats to their established business models; it’s hard to change. However, these early push-aways from new tech only result in reactive strategies later on, usually resulting in what pains they are facing now.

Ford is scaling back its EV efforts, and GM’s projects are hurting. Although they both have in-house self-driving projects, they are falling well behind the progress of Tesla and even other competitors.

It is getting to a point where short-term risk will become a long-term setback, and they may have to rely on a company to pull them out of a tough situation later on, just as it did with Tesla and EV charging infrastructure.

Tesla has continued to innovate, while legacy automakers have lagged behind, and it has cost them dearly.

Implications and Future Outlook

Moving forward, Tesla’s progress will continue to accelerate, while a dismissive attitude by other companies will continue to penalize them, especially as time goes on. Falling further behind in self-driving could eventually lead to market share erosion, as autonomy could be a crucial part of vehicle marketing within the next few years.

Eventually, companies could be forced into joint partnerships as economic pressures mount. Some companies did this with EVs, but it has not resulted in very much.

Self-driving efforts are not only a strength for companies themselves, but they also contribute to other things, like affordability and safety.

Tesla has exhibited data that specifically shows its self-driving tech is safer than human drivers, most recently by a considerable margin. This would help with eliminating accidents and making roads safer.

Tesla’s new Safety Report shows Autopilot is nine times safer than humans

Additionally, competition in the market is a good thing, as it drives costs down and helps innovation continue on an upward trend.

Conclusion

The parallels are unmistakable: a decade ago, legacy automakers laughed off electric vehicles as toys for tree-huggers, crushed their own EV programs, and bet everything on the internal-combustion status quo–only to watch Tesla redefine the industry while they scrambled for billions in catch-up capital.

Today, the same companies are turning down repeated offers to license Tesla’s Full Self-Driving technology, insisting they can build better autonomy in-house, even as their own programs stumble through recalls, layoffs, and missed milestones. History is not merely rhyming; it is repeating almost note-for-note.

Elon Musk has spent twenty years warning that the auto industry’s bureaucratic inertia and short-term thinking will leave it stranded on the wrong side of technological revolutions. The question is no longer whether Tesla is ahead–it is whether the giants of Detroit, Stuttgart, and Toyota will finally listen before the next wave leaves them watching another leader pull away in the rear-view mirror.

This time, the stakes are not just market share; they are the very definition of what a car will be in the decades ahead.