I call bullshit on [0]. The government is buying goods and services from SpaceX. That's not subsidizing -- that's being a customer. It's particularly not subsidizing when the alternative suppliers of said goods and services are 3-7 times the price.

Ok, here ya go:

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4079749-nevada-demonstrates...

Nevada and SpaceX have nothing to do with each other.

Is goalpost-moving some kind of sport these days?

Did you even read both articles?

New York state is spending $750 million to build a solar panel factory in Buffalo for SolarCity. The San Mateo, Calif.-based company will lease the plant for $1 a year. It will not pay property taxes for a decade, which would otherwise total an estimated $260 million. The federal government also provides grants or tax credits to cover 30% of the cost of solar installations. SolarCity reported receiving $497.5 million in direct grants from the Treasury Department.

That figure, however, doesn't capture the full value of the government's support.

Since 2006, SolarCity has installed systems for 217,595 customers, according to a corporate filing. If each paid the current average price for a residential system — about $23,000, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists — the cost to the government would total about $1.5 billion, which would include the Treasury grants paid to SolarCity.

Nevada has agreed to provide Tesla with $1.3 billion in incentives to help build a massive battery factory near Reno.

The Palo Alto company has also collected more than $517 million from competing automakers by selling environmental credits. In a regulatory system pioneered by California and adopted by nine other states, automakers must buy the credits if they fail to sell enough zero-emissions cars to meet mandates. The tally also includes some federal environmental credits.

Thanks for your constructive reply btw.

It's very clear that Tesla benefits from excessive subsidies. They even had states compete on how many tax cuts and other benefits they could provide:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigafactory_1#State_competitio...

By even bringing up SpaceX you're trying to narrow the goalposts to something no one else is talking about.

Is there a single US corporation that doesn't rely on government handouts? Complaining only about Tesla seems disingenuous when you have massive handouts given to oil and gas companies, not too mention how many cities are offering Amazon what is equivalent to free reign if they get HQ2.

You can complain about corporate welfare but only complaining about one corporation isn't really fair. Walmart utilizes local police forces to skimp on internal security (not too mention using welfare to subsidize poor pay), Military companies relying on politicians literally stuffing their coffers while the Pentagon argues otherwise, resource extraction companies are given free permits to bleed the land dry, agricultural subsidies, 0% interest loans dictated through the Fed, the auto bailouts, the financial bailouts, propping up home prices through artificial means. The pattern seems to be taking tax dollars and giving them to corporations.

The vast majority of US corporations are far too small to get tailored breaks and incentives. TARP/lending of last result is another thing entirely.

So does Honda. Theses fall under normal 'subsidies', hell Trump was known for getting similar subsidies on Hotels and golf courses that don't create large numbers of high paying jobs.

As long as it's local not federal money I don't see the need to complain, because it's not my money.

Just because everyone in the US is accustomed to larger companies being able to negotiate a lower tax burden doesn't mean that a transparent, regulated system of breaks and incentives is vastly more equitable and less vulnerable to corruption and capture. Individual states shouldn't be undercutting each other either and bidding away their revenue.

While I don't disagree, companies are forced to play this game lest their competition under cut them.

However, locations are forced to play the game from network effects which push companies out of small communities. So, banning this behavior is likely to make things even worse for small town America. Still, getting rid of this might be better, but it's not as clear cut as you might think.

It's the LA Times article that brought up SpaceX. Also, I'm part of "no one else".

Yes, the "else" implies a singleton, not a null set.

nkoren and I are different people. "no one else is talking about X" is not true when 2 people are talking about X.

And what percentage of the entire US defense budget amounts to a subsidy for the petroleum industry?

Not saying subsidies of either type are good or bad... just saying that it's not reasonable to accuse Musk's companies of excessive reliance on public funding, while neglecting the beams in his competitors' eyes.

I think you misunderstood your source [1]. He appears to be the CTO of a company that made a third-party app for Tesla owners, called TezLab. It does not appear to be affiliated with Tesla, and appears to have even rebranded at some point from "Teslab" to "TezLab". The closest relationship appears to be that the CTO owns a Tesla.

Either way - his company gains if Tesla succeeds no?

Tesla didn't contract them to make TesLab.

> HFC co-founders Ben Schippers and Will Schenk are both Tesla owners and wanted to levelup their driving experience, pushing the limits of the data being collected to help solve typical ownership problems that Tesla itself had not yet addressed and add a bit of fun.

Where is your source?

That's a sunk cost, though. It's not a financial interest in the company unless taxpayers could lose more money. (Or gain money.)

Why are you conflating SpaceX and Tesla?

I would have said "and SolarCity" but of course Tesla owns SolarCity now.

It's really quite genius to build a really expensive solar roof tile when the tax breaks are for solar installations. Find a way to charge a premium price for a premium product (eg, a tile, not just a simple panel), get tax breaks for it all!

Half of what Tesla does is product engineering, the other half is financial engineering. Both are critical to their success on an accelerated time table.

As a taxpayer, I support Tesla, am glad to have subsidized them, and I don’t care if they turn a profit.