Macron, A Man After Elon Musk’s Heart

French President Macron Sells ‘The Attractiveness of France’ to Elon Musk

On May 15th, French President Macron announced that he had met with Twitter and Tesla CEO. The announcement was made on his official Twitter account.

Macron said, “With @ElonMusk, we talked about the attractiveness of France and the significant progress in the electric vehicle and energy sectors. We also talked about digital regulation. We have so much to do together. See you this afternoon at the #ChooseFrance Summit!”

Before the meeting, Elon Musk has been on a world tour in recent months, heading to South Korea, Indonesia, and Mexico. These tours have been mostly because Tesla has been growing its global market presence.

This has involved setting up new facilities outside of the United States and expanding into a great number of new markets with its new Model 3 and Model Y vehicles. These tours have eventually led him to France.

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The pair met ahead of the Choose France business summit which will be held in Versailles. The summit is supposed to tout France as the market of choice for expanding businesses (like Tesla) as well as unveil roughly 13 billion euros of new business investments into the country.

The 13 billion euros ($14 billion) investment was made by the about 200 business leaders who attended the event in Versailles.

The meeting between the two came at an opportune time for the two. On one hand, President Macron is facing increasing political pressure while Elon Musk’s Tesla is facing ever-increasing competition as well as pressure to maintain their production.

Also in attendance at the meeting, was French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire. The minister said that he was confident that Tesla was going to make “significant investments” into the country.

This is not the first time that the country has tried to convince Elon Musk to invest in the country. Previously, they tried to convince Musk to choose the country for Tesla’s European gigafactory.

However, Tesla chose Germany instead and established their only such plant in Europe so far there. When asked if France was trying to persuade Musk to construct a gigafactory in France, Le Maire replied that he’d like to keep the details of their conversations a secret given the fierce competition from opposers.

Speaking to reporters, Musk also declined to disclose the details of the meeting. He said, “No announcement today but I am very impressed with President Macron and the French government and how welcoming they are.”