You still have to borrow money to: start the car company, pay yourself, pay workers, build a factory, get raw materials, design a car, then manufacturer and sell it before that $7,500 subsidy kicks in. Compious amounts of subsidy earlier in the pipeline makes it substantially easier to do all the of above steps. How much easier would it be to start a company if your salary and the salary of the employees was paid for by the government before you ever made and sold a product?

so it's six of one now, vs a half-dozen later, except that you have to get to later to get the half dozen, and there's no guarantee you'll get there.

Difference is - if manufacturing would be subsidized, then such company could export cars subsidized by US taxpayer, without tax payer seeing any benefit for US

This argument makes the most sense to me, thanks. Hopefully American auto manufacturers will get a clue and build smaller cars. You could have several in-town ranged compact cars from the batteries and resources used for one EV Hummer, for instance.