Interesting info. If they got 750 million statewide investment, the factory used $700 million of it then? 50 mil left over? I hate state investments in businesses via direct or tax cuts. But this couldn't be worse than Washington state's massive tax cuts for boeing, which proceeded to move more production and jobs to their east coast factory right after they got the tax brake.

> But this couldn't be worse than Washington state's massive tax cuts for boeing,

I see your Boeing deal and raise you one Wisconsin deal with Foxconn that will cost the state $4.5 billion and thousands of jobs that most likely never existed.

Is there a worse tax deal a state has ever made? Anyone?

okay, you win, that's probably worse. That foxconn deal looked like it could end up with just a few dozen new jobs.

Based on your timeline, it seems that Tesla was already, at least partially engaged since SolarCity's acquisition of Silevo.

So the whole project is stuck in development hell? Is this going to be "Gigafactory/2"? I guess the question I need to ask is "is this project dead or on hold?"

Why would have Elon Musk been involved? Did he actively participate in SolarCity management before the acquisition?

Yes.

Solar City was a Musk (nee Rive) family business from the start.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SolarCity#History

> SolarCity was founded in 2006 by brothers Peter and Lyndon Rive, based on a suggestion for a solar company concept by their cousin, Elon Musk, who is the chairman and helped start the company.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_Rive

> Rive is a cousin of SolarCity investor and entrepreneur Elon Musk, as their mothers are twins

(That means that Rive and Musk are genetically half-siblings.)

> (That means that Rive and Musk are genetically half-siblings.)

Apropos of nothing, I'm now imagining a world with forms of address based on the natural logarithm of shared genetic material.

There is an app that will tell you and another person with the same app how closely related you are and will show the ancestry chain between the two of you. It turns out the my wife and I are 10th cousins (common great-whatever grandparents in the 1600s). I started calling her my cousin-wife, but she didn't think it was funny, so I had to stop ;-)

10th cousin is basically “not related”. That same app (Relative Finder) says that Obama is my 10th cousin.

What is the app called?

Isn't this roughly how people talk about their relationship with Native American tribes? They don't do the log2 math, but they're happy to hit you with the fraction.

Certainly, First Nation People of Australia had a language of their own for this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Aboriginal_kinship

You're probably thinking of "blood quantum." It's... complicated.

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2018/02/09/583987261...

I come from an old Jewish family that's supposed to come King David, and I recently met a girl who comes from another family like that (rabbinical sources describe a dozen or so families with reasonable claims to Davidic lineage). We used to joke that we're longest removed siblings ever, and now I'm curious about what that natural logarithm would actually look like.

Wait wait, the evidence for "Musk was personally involved" was "his cousin did it"? I mean, it's hard to tell whether there's any wrongdoing here to allege at all, honestly. But to the extent there is: I think the upthread question is still unanswered. What does this have to do with Tesla?

Well, that and he (apparently) suggested it to them.

I think the cousin thing is just explaining why they were interacting at all.