'Will vote Republican': Musk calls Democrats the 'party of division and hate'

Billionaire Elon Musk, currently embroiled in a legal tangle over the acquisition of social media platform Twitter, said that he is going to vote Republican in the US. "In the past I voted Democrat, because they were [mostly] the kindness party. But, they have become the party of division and hate, so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican. Now, watch their dirty tricks campaign against me unfold," he tweeted.

Musk has been a vocal critic of the Biden administration and Democrats for their proposals to tax billionaires and give more tax incentives to union-made electric vehicles, Reuters reported. Tesla was removed from the closely-watched sustainable index ESG recently, a move which Musk criticised.

Recently, the US government's road safety agency had dispatched a team to investigate the possibility that a Tesla involved in a California crash that killed three people was operating on a partially automated driving system. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Wednesday confirmed that it had sent a special crash investigation team to probe the May 12 crash on the Pacific Coast Highway in Newport Beach.

The investigation is part of a larger inquiry by the agency into crashes involving advanced driver assistance systems such as Tesla's Autopilot. Since 2016, the agency has sent teams to 34 crashes in which the systems were either in use or suspected of operating. Of the 34, 28 involved Teslas, according to a NHTSA document released Wednesday. Fifteen people died in the crashes that NHTSA is investigating, and at least 15 more were hurt. Of the deaths, 14 occurred in crashes involving Teslas, the documents say.

In addition to the specific crashes, NHTSA has investigations under way into Teslas on Autopilot crashing into emergency vehicles parked along roadways, as well as a probe into autopilot braking for no apparent reason.