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Comment by boplicity | Hacker News Reader

You seem to not understand the vast amount of government funding that Tesla has benefited from. It is indeed "government intervention" -- just a different kind.

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That seems irrelevant to the OP point though.

The US government funding of Tesla doesn't change the fact that the US government didn't go the EU route of mandating a design early on.

No, but they do have requirements to receive federal funding to build chargers under the recent NEVI program, and that includes using connectors that are non-proprietary.

That's the american way - a highly integrated form of state capitalism that's been given a label "free market" for political expediency. It's all just a 3-card monte game of categories and euphemisms.

I don't like your post. If I lobby you with a few hundred dollars, would you change it to say how the American Way of free market capitalism is wonderful and fair and not at all a plutocracy?

$7500 tax rebate, baby!

Yes, $7500 tax rebate for the 3 and half people that are eligible. The latest version of this rebate has income limits and people within that income are most likely not the people who buy new cars at full price, ICE or EV.

Eh, I think this covers a huge majority of the country...and absolutely already buy $50,000 vehicles.

> Adjusted Gross Income Limitations

> $300,000 for married couples filing jointly

> $225,000 for heads of households

> $150,000 for all other filers

Also in the charging station funding.

Tesla built coast-to-coast supercharger network years before any talk of charging station funding.

Charging station funding is a subsidy to legacy carmakers, because they don't to spend a penny building charging infrastructure. Let the govt (Us: taxpayers) pay for it.

Mary, you electrified the entire auto industry, you led, and it matters (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UduPjk9gonw). At the time of this announcement, GM has zero EVs being sold.

President Biden shared a video of himself and General Motors CEO Mary Barra while stating that GM and Ford are building more electric vehicles in America than ever before: https://cleantechnica.com/2022/02/02/president-biden-hypes-f...

https://electrek.co/2021/11/18/president-biden-gm-ceo-marry-...

It is obvious that Govt hates Tesla, it is never mentioned. All the subsidies are for Ford and GM.

Not direct funding, but rather tax rebates. These rebates were/are also available to every EV manufacturer here.

I think we should give more credit to Musk's political and regulation influencing power. These tax rebates didn't randomly end up in Tesla's pocket.

We can bash on him for the mountain of stupid stuff he does, but dancing with the government in highly regulated fields is where he seems to shine.

And make his fans believe he’s a champion of free market and a self made man that is fighting big government. We can see it clearly in action in this thread, it’s working on many.

At the state level they got hundreds of millions for the unviable battery swap demonstration and extremely limited deployment.

I think New York gave them a billion subsidy for Buffalo (or maybe spent a billion total on multiple companies?).

Isn't the infrastructure act just straight up cash payments?

Also direct funding, I believe in the form of subsidized loans

Not subsidized, but guaranteed loans. There is a difference. This is a normal practice for up and coming technologies.

Tesla took a loan and fully repaid it.

Issuance Date: January 2010, Loan fully repaid in May 2013

https://www.energy.gov/lpo/tesla

But it is a government intervention. No banks were willing to give them that loan. Government gave them money when nobody else wanted.

The loan was subsidized; commercial entities wouldn't give such a loan, hence even when repaid was a cost to the public. The idea, of course, is that this cost is paying by public good, but Tesla mis-stated the truth, and didn't grant back the public good it was supposed to.

Tesla got preferential treatment from a government entity and benefitted from public funds.

Also the government subsided them by effectively paying a portion of every Tesla sale price for a long while.

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