It is actually a reasonable
It is actually a reasonable discussion about fuel and energy use, and is probably typical of other closed door discussions between power brokers, each trying to serve their own interests best. Petroleum makes trillions of dollars, so having the president's ear on future energy issues is very lucrative. With this discussion being in 2018, there were very active campaigns devised by the petroleum industry, competitors, and Tesla stock short sellers to discredit Tesla, spread rumors of the company's pending failure, and to spread doubt about the future of electric vehicles in general. Plus of course actively supporting and promoting fossil fuels, which still completely dominate the transportation sector. CNG (compressed natural gas) is relatively clean, and across the country it has been replacing coal as the main source of electricity production. This has been facilitated mostly by the increase in fracking and subsequent reduction in CNG fuel cost. Most homes in California are heated using CNG, and nearly half of California's electricity is coming from CNG power plants today. So in that way, the oil companies are still winning with electrical cars, because much of the electricity is coming from CNG in the end. Of course renewable power is growing, and in CA it accounts for nearly 1/3rd of our electricity, but a lot of CA power is still imported from out of state. For vehicles, CNG is cleaner than gasoline, and of course diesel, but it has to be stored in pressurized tanks, and it contains less energy than gas, so the mileage is notably lower. Even with renewable energy sources available, solar only provides electricity during the day, and wind and wave power generation are periodic and variable as well, with batteries only able to cover a small part of the needed energy storage during off generation times. The upshot is that these kinds of closed doors conversations have gone on forever, and rich and powerful people will always work to become richer and more powerful. But overall progress is still being made to produce cleaner, renewable energy, and the move towards electric vehicles is really starting to gather momentum now, despite interference from oil interests.