116 Comments Tesla (TSLA) is soaring in anticipation that Trump’s administration will make an easier path for Tesla’s self-driving tech, which still doesn’t work, to be approved federally. Currently, self-driving technology is addressed at the state level, with each state having its own regulations for approving self-driving systems on its roads. During a conference call following Tesla’s last earnings results, CEO Elon Musk, who has been financially backing the reelection of Donald Trump and “fully endorsed” him, hinted that he could work with the new federal government to get a federal self-driving approval process going. Now, Bloomberg reports that Trump’s transition team is discussing making it a priority: Members of President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team have told advisers they plan to make a federal framework for fully self-driving vehicles one of the Transportation Department’s priorities, according to people familiar with the matter. This news sent Tesla’s stock up 7%, or an increase of $70 billion in value. That’s surprising because before now, the regulatory aspect of Tesla’s self-driving effort didn’t seem like the biggest hurdle – making the technology work still seems to be the biggest hurdle. Tesla has been wrong about its self-driving timeline too many times to count, but the latest one is to release unsupervised self-driving in California and Texas in Q2 2025.