| Thanks for reading Hyperdrive, Bloomberg's newsletter on the future of the auto world. Just over a year ago, Tesla staged a 3 ½ hour event to lay out Elon Musk's latest "master plan." Whereas the CEO's past blueprints were all about what the company was setting out to do, this one was much broader — the electric-car leader wanted to outline what it would take to convert the globe to sustainable energy generation and use. "The thing that we wanted to convey, probably more importantly than anything else that we're talking about here, is that there is a clear path to a sustainable energy Earth," Musk said in March 2023. "There is a clear path to a fully sustainable Earth with abundance." Sixteen months later, Musk has changed his tune. "Civilization does need oil & gas for quite some time," Musk wrote this week on X. "I don't think we should demonize an industry that is essential for humanity to function."  Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Photographer: Apu Gomes/Getty Images To be fair to Musk, he has some company in seeming to have evolved on how long fossil fuels will stick around. The trail Tesla blazed for electric vehicles is littered with automakers that built more EV production capacity than the market was ready to bear. As the quarterly earnings season gets underway for the car industry, the one through line already emerging is a further resetting of once-lofty expectations for EVs. Take General Motors, which just walked back a goal to be capable of making 1 million EVs annually by the end of next year. CEO Mary Barra is no longer inclined to lay down these sorts of mile markers, saying customer demand will dictate how quickly the company scales up. In the meantime, GM is making bank manufacturing the big gas-powered pickups that have long been the primary source of its profits. Earnings surged 60% in the second quarter, leading Barra to bump forecasts for this year up again. The outlook is less bright at Porsche, which lowered its projection for annual returns on Tuesday. Like GM, the sports-car maker is also dialing back EV assumptions, now expecting only 12% to 13% of the vehicles it sells this year to be battery-electric, down from as much as 15% previously. "The transition to electric vehicles will take longer than we assumed five years ago," Porsche said on Monday, tempering its longer-term expectations. While EVs could account for more than 80% of sales in 2030, the company said this is no longer its concrete goal. It's now Musk's turn to share earnings results, and he's got some explaining to do. His post on X speaking up for the oil and gas industry was part of an exchange with Silicon Valley billionaire Vinod Khosla, who had taken to Musk's social media network to weigh in on President Joe Biden exiting the race for the White House. A week after Musk had endorsed former President Donald Trump, the Tesla CEO encouraged Khosla to back the Republican nominee. The venture capitalist responded with a question: Did Musk really want a president who would set back efforts to combat climate change? "Sustainable energy production and consumption is growing very rapidly and is tracking to exceed use of hydrocarbon fuels," Musk replied. "That will happen no matter what Trump does." Tesla investors may require more convincing, considering the slowdown in momentum for electric vehicles. Trump ridiculed the Biden administration's EV policies during his nomination speech last week, vowing to reverse them on his first day in office. "The asterisk on any EV discussion with Trump is his growing friendship with (and financial support from) Elon Musk, which will likely soften his otherwise negative view," Reilly Brennan, a San Francisco-based partner at Trucks Venture Capital, wrote this week in his newsletter about the future of transportation. "It's either that Trump opens up to EVs, or that Tesla eventually builds a diesel truck."  An LG Energy Solution EV battery pack. Photographer: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg The biggest producer of batteries for electric vehicles in Europe may branch out to build energy-storage facilities for households amid weak demand for EVs. The Polish manufacturing unit of LG Energy Solution already indicated that its sales revenue from the east European country would likely drop by around a third this year to 26.5 billion zloty ($6.7 billion). "We are considering developing LG Energy Solution Wroclaw toward energy storage," Joanna Silska, a spokeswoman for the company in the southwestern Polish city, said by email. "Energy transformation is crucial and inevitable for European economies, therefore we're examining the potential for investments in new manufacturing capacities." | 
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