Trump's State Department Could Spend $400M on 'Armored' Teslas

Repurposing a comment I made when this was first reported:

This is from a procurement forecast. The department is listing all the things they might be interested in so that a small business/vendor has an opportunity to try to sell the government something. AKA this is the government's way of doing window shopping.

If you look up the attributed code DS/C/DEAV, DS stands for "Bureau of Diplomatic Security" and DEAV stands for "Defensive Equipment and Armored Vehicles Division". So these are armored cars for diplomats security details.

The same person put in the following orders:

- Armored Tesla (Production Units)

- ARMORED SEDAN

- ARMORED BMW X5/X7

- ARMORED EV (NOT SEDAN)

- R&D

The NAICS codes are wrong, and the cost numbers were clearly pulled out of thin air. Luckily, the Acquisition stage was only "PLANNING".

All this information is publicly available https://www.state.gov/procurement-forecast

Aren't electric vehicles terrible for armored use? Adding a bunch of weight on a giant battery pack that catches fire when punctured, and put that in a situation where they get shot at...

It appears to in fact be on hold:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/13/us/politics/state-dept-ar...

Don't worry guys, DOGE is going to snuff out this egregiously corrupt contract...

It's not there anymore

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/plans-buy-armored-teslas-vani...