> Tesla's enemies are everyone from Trump to the incumbent car companies Tesla would have already soundly beaten if they hadn't received a massive bailout.

Tesla also would not have survived without government money.

And the idea that Tesla would have "soundly beaten" the other car companies is simply not possible to believe. They make and sell far more cars every year than Tesla has made since its founding. Tesla simply does not make enough cars to satisfy mass market demand. Tesla is not able to do this because its manufacturing processes are not mature.

If every American wanted to buy a Tesla less than a million of them would be able to, and the rest would have to get their cars from the incumbent car companies. It’s hard to see how Tesla could beat the incumbents in such a scenario.

I like Tesla, but come on, be realistic.

Tesla got money from California (effectively) for selling no emissions credits to other car companies. Other companies could have made evs too, they were just against it, except Nissan which also benfitted for this with the leaf. The 7500 tax credits for buying large battery sized evs helped Tesla too, but people got credits for butingbmw i3, Nissan leaf, gm volt gm bolt. It served a purpose which was to help know kick off a new market and it's being deducted to half in 2019 based on sales over 200k cars.

Only 2 us car companies didn't go bankrupt in the recession in in 2009, Ford and Tesla. Ford and Tesla both got govt loans to design evs, only Tesla had finished paying theirs back.

Tesla got almost $500 million from the Department of Energy. Yes, they paid it back, but that is not my point. My point is that Tesla would not have survived if it had not received that government money.

Maybe its more meritorious to accept and repay a government loan than to be bailed out, but from the point of view of the taxpayer (and the free market) Tesla and GM both owe their survival to taxpayer money.

I believe it was a development loan, not a bailout. I don't understand why you point it out as underhanded. How would you compare Tesla to Chrysler and gm which really went bankrupt and had actual bailouts, not loans to develop new products in unexplored technical areas. GM got a more than $20b investment from the us government. I am glad we did save our auto industry in the us - but Tesla wasn't a bailout as I see it.

I didn’t say Tesla was a bailout, and I didn’t say it was underhanded. I said that Tesla would not have survived without government money, and that is true.

So you are arguing that without that capital Musk would not have been able to raise money from the private sector?

Yes, definitely. It would have been a very hard sell at that time.

Perhaps, but if you consider that shortly after most of the automakers would go bankrupt, Musk would then have been in a very powerful position and would easily have been able to find private capital to help him extract the most useful 20% of value from some of the bankrupt companies for use by Tesla.

Private investors did not want to invest in outdated infrastructure and overburdened pension programs, which is why the government bailout was "needed" in the first place.

But if bankruptcy had been allowed to proceed, the best bits would have gone to the highest bidder, and Musk was well positioned to become the highest bidder.

  Tesla also would not have survived without
  government money.

And Tesla is one of two American car companies that have never gone bankrupt & taken government bailouts.

  other car companies ... make and sell far
  more cars every year than Tesla has made
  since its founding.

Just looking at some data here [1][2] Tesla sold more model 3s in 2018 year-to-date than all of

1. Hyundai Accents in 2017

2. All Smartcars in any of recent years

3. Subaru Imprezas (excluding WRX/STI) in 2016

4. All Jaguars in recent years

5. Infiniti G-35s in 2013

6. Lexus ES in 2015

To have better sales than Tesla Model 3, you basically have to be a Nissan Sentra, Toyota Prius, Honda Civic, Honda Accord, Toyota Camry, Toyota Corolla, or some other extremely well-known line of cars from a reputable brand.

[1]https://insideevs.com/tesla-model-3-sales-epic-august/ [2]http://carsalesbase.com/us-car-sales-data/hyundai/hyundai-ac...